Re: Failing business models

From: Steve Hitchcock <sh94r_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 12:07:06 +0000

Jan, Perhaps support for your transition to, effectively, gold OA
publishing is slow because you make some big assumptions that need to be
examined before considering the detail of any transition, and the analysis
omits the effect of green OA.

> it's not the use of the subscription model by commercial publishers that
is the 'primary problem'. It is the fact that the subscription system
cannot cope with the unrelenting growth of scientific articles that is
being produced worldwide.

Does gold deal with the 'unrelenting growth' and, therefore, cost? That is
far from being demonstrated. It's entirely possible that it wouldn't. It
could be just a continuation of the current cost spiral. The reason for
this is that journals act as monopolies, and so would gold journals. The
fact that gold journals make content OA, because it's paid for on the
production side, doesn't change this. Authors are still the captive market
for the best journals. Jan outlines at length why the subscription system
in not ideal. Are we in danger of idealising gold OA journals? What might
have lead to a non-ideal system? Perhaps the need for publishers to grow
profits. Might gold publishers have the same motive? Here's another (and
this is where I question Fytton's point): authors don't typically have to
pay the publication fees themselves. Research funders and others may pay
the fees for them, and gold publishers have schemes by which institutions
can get a discount on publication fees. Does this sound familiar? Are we
reintroducing the means by which the market became distorted in the first
place?

Let's look again at the subscription system. It's long been derided as the
cause of the 'serials crisis', but as Jan notes, libraries have been
reluctant to switch from it, even though they appear to be the primary
losers from the crisis. From the publisher side we hear that OA mandates
risk abruptly ending the (subscription) journals industry. Here's another
suggestion: with green OA we will have better publishing, better journals
and a more sustainable subscription publishing system because, referring
back to our last conversation, the loss of exclusivity will force the
subscription journal to focus on other forms of value-added. Is that as
plausible as the assumption that gold is the only alternative? What gives
me pause here to answer my own question is what happens when we have full
OA, because at that point it's hard to envisage subscriptions remaining the
major revenue raising approach. Web commerce already suggests services over
subscription. But it is still a valid question for now.

So Jan presents a case for gold and it would give us OA, but it doesn't
make it clearly better, in the terms Jan outlines, than the OA alternatives.

I don't have all the answers, but it is important to question the
assumptions implicit in this subscription vs gold scenario before blindly
accepting it on the basis that subscriptions are dysfunctional. Ironically,
at Springer Jan represents gold via hybrid OA, which offers the best way of
answering these questions. Go green and offer optional gold. Sounds good to
me.

Ultimately I believe this debate is not about whether we will have full OA
(we will) but about control of the transition and about control afterwards.
Jan's contributions are clever because they seek a solution to OA while
representing this apparently benign interest. This is another reason
repositories are so important, because not only do they provide OA now,
they give institutions and researchers a direct stake in the process too.

Steve

At 14:15 22/02/2007, Velterop, Jan, Springer UK wrote:

>Fytton,
>
>You say that publishers should convert their journals to gold OA. I agree,
>of course. Hybrid models are a staging post in the transition process.
>What we shouldn't forget, though, is that the publishers cannot convert to
>gold OA in isolation. Unless librarians, funders, authors, university
>administrators, et cetera support such change, not only in word, but in
>deed, it will be problematic and very slow in coming. That support, I'm
>afraid, especially in deed, is still rather limited and fragmentary at the
>moment.
>
>Best,
>
>Jan
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of J.F.B.Rowland
>Sent: Thu 2/22/2007 12:53 PM
>To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>Subject: Re: Failing business models
>
>Thanks, Jan, for this very lucid explanation of the situation regarding
>subscription-based scholalrly publishing and why it is now dysfunctional.
>
>The publishers' Brussels Declaration spoke of a 'healthy, undistorted free
>market' in scholarly publishing. As your explanation shows, such a market
>does not exist at present - nor, indeed, has it ever. Each journal is a
>natural monopoly - you can't get the same content anywhere else. And the
>existence of a healthy free market has the prerequisite that 'he who pays
>the piper calls the tune'. In scholarly publishing this has never been
>the case. Authors control the journals (by their choice of where to
>submit their work) and it is there for their benefit; but libraries pay
>the bills.
>
>If the publishers mean what they say about a 'healthy, undistorted free
>market', they should convert their journals to Gold OA. Then we will
>finally reach the position where those who 'call the tune' actually 'pay
>the piper'.
>
>Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.
>
>----- Original Message -----
>
> From: Velterop, Jan, Springer UK
> <<mailto:Jan.Velterop_at_SPRINGER.COM>mailto:Jan.Velterop_at_SPRINGER.COM>
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 10:34 AM
> Subject: Failing business models
>
>
> Dana Roth writes that "The primary problem with the current
> system is the failing business model followed by many commercial publishers."
>
> I presume she means the subscription model. Which, incidentally,
> is not just used by commercial publishers but also by not-for-profit ones.
>
> I agree with her. But it's not the use of the subscription model
> by commercial publishers that is the 'primary problem'. It is the fact
> that the subscription system cannot cope with the unrelenting growth of
> scientific articles that is being produced worldwide.
>
> Before the internet, the subscription model had increasing
> problems, but it was probably the least worst solution, by no means
> ideal. Now, with the internet working and pretty mature, we can have
> better systems. There definitely are publishers, for-profit as well as
> not-for-profit (just look at the recent press release of the DC
> Principles Coalition), who seem to be wedded to the subscription model,
> but not only publishers. Libraries, too, do not seem to be too keen on
> replacing the dysfunctional system with a better one. And even a school
> of thought in the OA advocate camp, the self-archiving champions, argue
> that the subscription system will continue to sustain journals.
>
> Of course there are difficulties to overcome if one wants to make
> the transition from one system to the next, and let's concentrate on
> overcoming those difficulties.
>
> The subscription system has the following problems (and quite
> possibly more):
>
> -The price to readers/libraries bears no relation to quality.
> This needs no further explanation, I guess.
>
> -The price to readers/libraries bears no relation to the amount
> per article that's taken out of the academic market. A 'cheap' journal
> can, on a per-article basis, take more money out of Academia than an
> 'expensive' journal. This is more common than is perhaps realised. A
> substantial number of not-for-profits have seemingly low subscription
> prices, but take more money per article out of the academic market than
> even the most expensive commercial publishers (where it hovers in the
> $5000 range). I know of several cases where it is twice or even three
> times as much, and if someone would care to analyse this information (it
> often is available, for not-for-profits), one might find even higher multiples.
>
> -The price to readers/libraries bears no relation to the cost of
> publishing, but rather, to the numbers of subscribers. This is the origin
> of the price spiral. Journals were cancelled, and for some reason
> commercial journals suffered more than not-for-profit journals, on the
> whole (with exceptions), as a result of which subscription prices went
> up. This caused further cancellations and thus the vicious cycle was
> created. One of the reasons why some not-for-profits have been able to
> maintain lower prices is the existence of cancellation-resistant
> compulsory member subscriptions.
>
> -The cost to libraries of subscriptions that are needed bears
> little relation to the size of the actual research or teaching efforts at
> the institute in question, but instead, reflects the width of the range
> of disciplines researched or taught. A specialised institute (take CERN
> as an example) needs no more than a handful of journals. On the other
> hand, a university where the name 'university' still relates to
> 'universal' knowledge, and where a wide range of subjects are taught and
> researched, needs vastly larger numbers of journals to satisfy the needs
> of its constituents.
>
> -Subscription price stability can only exist in an environment of
> stability of the number of subscriptions, and of articles published. But
> that environment doesn't exist. Library budgets have been under pressure
> for the longest time, which is especially apparent if they are expressed
> as a percentage of the research budgets. And the number of articles keep
> on growing.
>
> Most of these problems are solved in a system in which the
> 'publish or perish' culture (which is definitely not of the publishers'
> making) is reflected more transparently. A system in which research
> articles are seen for what they are: a kind of 'advertisement' in which
> the author 'advertises' his scientific prowess, in order to get
> acknowledgment, citations, leading to tenure, future funding, for a few
> the Nobel Prize, et cetera. That doesn't mean that articles aren't full
> of information useful to readers. But so are conventional advertisements.
>
> The advertising analogy is not perfect, but I'm using it to
> illustrate the point that there is logic in the system that levies
> charges for the processing and formal publication of research articles
> and subsequently makes them universally available with open access. Open
> access publishing.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Dana Roth
> Sent: Wed 2/21/2007 11:28 PM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
> Subject: Re: Some initial thoughts on the Brussels Declaration on
> STM publishing
>
> The fact that something is possible doesn't mean it is advisable.
>
> There is a distinct advantage in having an organizational
> structure that
> one can depend on to maintain stability. Sure, the 'research
> community'
> can create their own journals, but who among them is going to give up
> their research and/or teaching to manage the process?
>
> The evolution of distributing research results, from circulating
> letters
> among peers to the formal journals we know today, occurred because of
> the obvious benefits in an organizational structure.
>
> The primary problem with the current system is the failing business
> model followed by many commercial publishers.
>
> Dana Roth
> Caltech
>
>
Received on Fri Feb 23 2007 - 12:48:08 GMT