Re: Economics of open access publishing

["\"FrederickFriend\"" <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

As this article appears to be available only on subscription, it is
difficult to assess the value of research we cannot read, but I make the
following points:

1. What the author of this article appears to have done is to 
compare a selection of open access publication charges with a 
selection of the costs of the present subscription system, i.e. 
comparing some publishers' OA charges with library subscription 
payments, which of course are only a part of the cost of the 
subscription system.

2. I am also not sure whether the author has used accurate 
figures on the number of articles for which CERN funding would be 
used, as research undertaken at CERN is funded by many 
institutions across the world. A total picture of particle 
physics research across the world and the cost of disseminating 
that research would give a more accurate picture.

3. The article appears only to cover costs without any assessment 
of economic or academic benefits from either the subscription or 
the OA model. On the issue of large versus small institutions, 
for example, even if the costs of OA are higher (unproven from 
what I can assess of this article) the benefits will also be 
correspondingly higher.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Davis" <pmd8@cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 2:06 AM
Subject: Economics of open access publishing

> Economics of open access publishing
> Magaly Bescones Dominguez
> Serials - 19(1), March 2006
> http://serials.uksg.org/openurl.asp?genre=3Darticle&issn=3D0953-0460&volume=
> =3D19&issue=3D1&spage=3D52
>
> In this new article published in Serials, the author calculated 
> the article costs under two Open Access models: (1) Simple 
> model -- the publisher's costs are covered by a single source, 
> and (2) Hybrid model -- the publisher's costs are covered by a 
> complex combination of two (or more) elements, such as the 
> payment by the author, subscription fees, the institution=92s 
> affiliation, etc.
>
> "The results shown in Table 4 are very clear. Publication costs
> for CERN under the IOP open access model would be at least nine
> times more expensive than the current subscription fee of JHEP."
> (p. 56), and
>
> "the publication cost for CERN under Springer Open Choice model
> would be at least five times more expensive than the current
> subscription fee" (p. 57).  These results were also confirmed by
> the PLoS model.  The author concludes from her analysis that, "in
> general, the open access models available would be more expensive
> for CERN than the cost of periodical subscriptions." (p. 57)
[SNIP]