Re: Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing

[Fred.Jenkins@notes.udayton.edu]

Jan,

I am not defining fair nor do I have any interest in doing so; I 
will make decisions about subscriptions based on circumstances 
and price as always.  But is evident from your original post and 
this reply that your definition of "fair" is whatever maintains 
or increases publisher revenues.  If OA does not reduce costs to 
libraries, then I'm not sure what is its purpose.  All we are 
doing then is moving the deck chairs.  In any case, the system is 
broken; if you want to hasten it to its grave that is your 
lookout.  The stock market and real estate bubbles went on far 
longer than any rational person would have thought, but they 
crashed in the end.  No doubt the journal bubble will as well.

cheers,
FJ

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Collections & Operations
   & Professor
University of Dayton Libraries


-----owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote: -----

To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
From: JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>
Sent by: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Date: 06/25/2010 08:10PM
Subject: Re: Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing

Fred,

I'm interested to hear how you define 'fair'. And more to the
point, perhaps, is the notion of fairness anything other than
problematic in a situation where what you might call 'fair'
publishers don't have anything to gain? Lower subscription prices
rarely, if ever, increase sales. In fact, the smaller, cheaper
journals are the most likely to be cut first, I understand.

If you don't like the price reductions in hybrid journals in
proportion to their OA content, what you have to do is ignore the
OA articles, and decide if the subscription price is what you
would pay for the journal without that OA content. The logical
next step is that you decide if a subscription price for any
journal is fair on the basis of the (non-OA) number of articles
published. If you look at subscription prices and divide them by
the number of (non-OA) articles published, you'll find vast
differences in subscription price per article. How do you decide
what's fair? The average? The median? The modus? Would it depend
on the mix of article types? And what would you do regarding the
ones that fall outside your 'fair' range? Cancel? Or just moan?
(I mean 'express displeasure', of course.)

I'm in favour of the 'Pay-Or-Go-Away' model of full OA. Hybrid
journals are problematic, but they are better than journals that
do not offer any OA option at all.

****

From: "Fred.Jenkins@notes.udayton.edu"

Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing - That
is a fallacy.  You are only talking about net publisher revenue,
which would make sense if the journal were totally open source
and nobody paid for a subscription.  But as long as the journals
are partly open source and partly subscription model, anyone who
wants the full content of the journal has to pay the subscription
price.  If the same full-price institutional subscriber also pays
some open access fees for its authors, the institution is
actually paying more than the full subscription price!  Even
those who don't pay author fees are then still paying "full
price" for articles that the authors already have paid to have
made open access, which can only be described as an out and out
scam.  So at bottom you are saying that maintaining publisher
revenues is what defines fair, regardless of how you get there.

Fred W. Jenkins, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for Collections & Operations
& Professor, University of Dayton Libraries