Re: Libraries in Springer Open Choice

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

There could be a variety of ways of splitting costs that would make 
sense - 50:50 is a good suggestion.

Another idea:  perhaps libraries could split the cost-savings with the
authors or their departments (e.g. if a large portion of the costs of
meeting a department's needs are covered through paying for OA, perhaps a
percentage could go back to collection development in that particular
area:  another 50:50 split)?

And/or, split up the payments from non-research-producing customers into
OA / TA support, based on the proportion of OA participation.  Use the OA
portion to subsidize the author charges (perhaps the first priority would
be to subsidize authors who cannot afford OA, with the next step being to
decrease the author charges overall).

This is getting a bit complicated, I know, but different people would be
doing the math, for reasons that would be of benefit them...

In my opinion, the monies research universities pay for subscription
access will in the long term prove more than sufficient to fund OA for
their own research production (based both on the efficiencies both of open
access - e.g. no authentication required, no labour-intensive ILL for
these items, and the electronic medium per se (e.g. costs per bit have
been decreasing and will likely continue to decrease; flexible, one-off
print processes are becoming more and more feasible by the day - e.g. many
people are now able to use their home computers to print their own photos
on specialized photo paper - there is no reason why one-off printing of
electronic journals, even colour journals with complex graphics, on fancy
paper - would not be feasible, if not in every home than at the local
print shop, in the near future).

However, other kinds of organizations will benefit from OA, and it strikes
me as useful to consider whether it make sense for these other
organizations to participate in the financing of OA.  The percentage of OA
financing that comes from these other kinds of organizations should
probably be kept at a modest level for two reasons:  first, to ensure a
cost-efficient system, and secondly but perhaps more importantly, to
ensure that the goals of the research-producing institutions themselves
remain paramount.

Smaller schools that produce a proportionate amount of the scholarly
literature could participate through making their own research OA.

Schools that do not produce research could participate through paying a
modest levy, based on their size and type, perhaps as a requirement for
licensing or certification.  For example, university and professional
schools that focus exclusively on education and contribute nothing to the
scholarly literature, should probably contribute the most, particularly
those offering programs at the graduate level.  For-profit schools would
contribute more than not-for-profits.  Colleges and technical institutes
would pay quite a bit less.  High schools, adult basic education, and to a
small extent even elementary schools, in theory should contribute a little
- however, given the current state of funding for education, my suggestion
would be that governments should contribute a modest amount on their
behalf. There are two other reasons why government should contribute a
modest portion of the total needed for OA:  first, the benefits that will
accrue to government departments and their libraries, and secondly, the
benefits to the public as a whole.  In all cases, the levy should reflect
the size of the institution, with some kind of minimum (i.e. there is no
point in collecting monies if the entire amount would go to cover
administration costs), and maximum.

The key to making this work, I think, would be setting up a very efficient
administration, one which would have strong incentives on an ongoing basis
to ensure that the funding goes where it should, and administrative costs
are kept to a minimum.  One way to do this would be to set up an agency
which reports primarily to the research institutions themselves (perhaps
through ARL or similar organizations?).  This would probably have to do
done on a country-by-country or regional basis, and there would likely be
some differences in the agencies themselves, reflecting local culture.  
For example, in many countries an agency funded entirely by government
would be feasible, while in other countries it is possible that the
research institutions would have to foot the bill themselves.  In other
areas, a split funding arrangement might be workable.

Perhaps this could be brought up for discussion at a future global summit,
such as WSIS (World Summit on the Information Society), since this will
work best if all countries are both contributors and beneficiaries.

As for timing, obviously this kind of system would have to kick in at a
point in time when the schools that are paying in would be receiving
sufficient benefits from OA for this to make sense to them.  Perhaps as
part of the transition process, payments could be increased on a gradual
level, or payments might start at different points in time for different
groups.

Earlier on this list, I brought forward an idea about how the corporate
sector could participate in funding OA, through the tax regime.  For
example, paying to support OA would benefit the corporate sector directly
through increased access, plus in many cases could also qualify for tax
relief, unlike subscription payments.  The corporate sector could also
support OA, perhaps as a requirement to qualify for R & D tax relief,
either directly through sharing results of research, or alternatively
paying to support research universities - perhaps through the kind of
agency discussed above).

While we're talking about author payment, let's remember that author
payment is only one means of financing OA publishing.  Another example is
for universities or university presses, funding bodies, or governments to
subsidize OA journal publishing.  As an example:  using the free software
that is available for OA publishing, the hardware that is already
available to me through my institution to perform other aspects of my
work, and the traditional support of universities to provide various
aspects of scholarly publishing on a voluntary basis (from conducting to
writing the research, to voluntary peer review and editing), in theory, an
individual faculty member could initiate any OA journal by themselves
(with help from voluntary editors and peer reviewers, naturally), without
any additional cost to the employing university.  If this hypothetical
journal were to prove to be a success, the individual faculty member might
be able to find very valuable supplementary help of a clerical or
technical nature (copy editing, proofreading, formatting) at a very low
cost indeed.

As an aside, $3,000 per article seems quite steep.  Perhaps Springer is
wise in starting off conservatively - leaves lots of room to develop more
efficient processes and therefore reduce costs in the future, and/or
subsidize authors who do not have access to funds for author charges?

By the way:  I completely agree with David Goodman and others on this
list, that it is not possible to completely separate the access aspect of
OA from the all of the issues involved in finding a stable means of
funding the production of quality (peer-reviewed, edited) scholarly
literature for the long term.  There are many aspects to producing, making
accessible, and preserving the scholarly literature.  Access to this
literature is extremely important, and open access is the ideal.  
However, this issue needs to be considered along with all the other needs
of a scholarly communication system.  This does not mean, though, that we
need to work everything out before we move to OA; many of the issues will
only come up during the transition process, and many potential solutions
will not be proven until we try them.  Therefore, let us proceed with all
the necessary steps towards OA as quickly as we can:  self-archiving our
own articles, starting up OA journals or converting current journals to
OA, developing and filling those institutional repositories, developing
and/or considering the policy and philosophical issues such as whether to
mandate OA for our own institution, etc., etc.

cheers,

Heather Morrison

On 14-Jul-04, at 5:57 PM, David Goodman wrote:

> On the other hand, apparently most other OA journal schemes penalize the 
> large schools, which produce most of the articles and thus pay for most 
> of the cost of the publication.  There are probably any number of 
> rational ways of handling this: One might start at 50:50.
>
> Dr. David Goodman
> dgoodman@liu.edu