Re: Fascinating quotation

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <chief-exec@alpsp.org>]

The costs which need to be recovered are the same, whether this is done
through author charges or explicit (or implicit) subsidy.  It makes no
difference.

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Heather Morrison" <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 27, 2004 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: Fascinating quotation

> On 23-Dec-04, at 8:44 PM, Sally Morris ((ALPSP)) wrote:
>
> > However, there are some big questions to be answered:
> >
> > What does the publication (or submission + publication) charge need to
> > be, for the journal to remain viable and to satisfy whatever the
> > profit/surplus needs of the parent organisation may be?
> >
> > Do authors have access to sufficient funds to cover that charge?
> Open access can be accomplished by many means - author payment is only one
> of the options.  Outside of a very few wealthy countries, subsidized
> academic journals - even in the subscription environment - are the norm.
> The reason for this is that academic journals (indeed, periodicals in
> general) that focus on needs and issues of a particular region without a
> huge, wealthy population base to purchase the subscriptions, are rarely an
> opportunity for profit-making.  They are published because the information
> is important, not to make profits.
>
> For societies as well, open access publications can be supported by means
> other than author charges.  For example, membership fees can be used to
> subsidize publication programs.
>
> It is possible that societies and associations are concerned about losing
> members if their publications were openly accessible.  This may or may not
> be the case, and the situation could well be different for different
> societies and associations.  It may very well be worth investigating this.
>
> The experience of the Oregon Library Association may be instructive here -
> after they made their quarterly publication openly accessible, their
> membership increased.  Having openly accessible information available at
> the society's web site enhances the prestige of the society, in my
> opinion.
>
> My guess is that many societies are assuming that members would drop out
> if publications were open access, when they may actually have a great many
> members who have online access to their publications through library
> subscriptions already.  Even if members do like to receive the print copy
> personally, and see this as a good reason to continue membership, this is
> compatible with open access.
>
> Other options for funding open access publications include advertising
> revenues and dual subscription / open access models, with the subscription
> version covering the costs.  There could be added value in the
> subscription version of many types, from high quality printing to extra
> content (letters to the editor, etc.) to inclusion in a system (such as an
> aggregated database) with a great search interface, better linking, etc.
>
> Here's another idea for societies:  encourage members to self-archive an
> open access copy of their articles, regardless of where published (the
> society journal, a commercial publisher, etc.).  Why not set up an
> e-prints server on the society website and encourage members to share
> their articles by submitting a copy there?  (They should submit to their
> institutional repository too, of course).  Or, set up links to members'
> articles, feature the works of members in newsletters, etc.?
>
> One of my groups, the Academic Librarians in Public Services committee of
> BCLA, has asked members about publications, etc., so as to post on the
> ALPS website in the near future.  There will be direct links to a few of
> my works there soon.  I'm not totally certain what to think about this -
> but thoughts of dropping that BCLA membership are not exactly springing to
> mind....:)
>
> There is a very great deal that societies could do to encourage the
> "green", or self-archiving, version of OA.  Listservs and publications
> could provide information to members, both about the opportunities for
> their publishing, and the many new items now available to them thanks to
> OA.
>
> Of course, author charges are an option as well.  My best ballpark guess
> of how much it actually costs to peer-review, edit, and publish a
> scholarly OA journal article, even a very high-end STM journal, is around
> $500 U.S. per article.  For my calculations, please see my "Imaginary
> Journal of High End Chemistry" - initiated through Liblicense, and now on
> the SPARC Open Access Forum.  To see the Imaginary Journal, go to the
> SPARC Open Access Forum Archive
> https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/List.html and search for
> "Imaginary Journal".  Comments and ideas for future issues are most
> welcome!
>
> As reported recently, SPARC Partner Optics Express is set to generate a
> modest net revenue based on publication charges of $450 per article for
> articles six pages and under, and $800 per article for articles over eight
> pages.
>
> The payment on production model of OA (I prefer this to author-charges,
> which I see as misleading) does not need to rely on payments by individual
> authors at all.  The library membership model as used by BMC and others,
> while not yet perfected of course, is definitely worthy of further
> exploration.  Joint library-faculty memberships might be worth a look as
> well.
>
> I'm sure there are many creative ways of changing the economics behind
> scholarly publishing, so that we can accomplish access for all (open
> access).
>
> thoughts?
>
> Heather G. Morrison
> Email:  heatherm@eln.bc.ca