Re: Open Choice Success Clauses?

[JOHANNES VELTEROP <velteropvonleyden@btinternet.com>]

As Heather rightly mentions, Springer sees Open Choice fees as 
revenue *substitutional* to subscription income.

Springer is also already talking to a number of test institutions 
and consortia willing to take an active role with regard to the 
payment of article processing charges about an approach along the 
lines that she mentions, with a view to work out mutually 
satisfactory methods.

Her last paragraph is puzzling. She talks about two models, 
"either the open choice or processing fee approaches". The open 
choice approach *is* a processing fee approach. And as for her 
assertion that "less than half of OA journals charge processing 
fees", I doubt that the 1200+ Springer journals that offer open 
access as a choice are included. But they should be; they do 
after all offer OA, just like any of the OA-only journals, so if 
(or rather, when) any funders or authors so wish, they can 
publish with full open access. The only way in which these 
journals differ from OA-only journals is that they do not feel 
that they should, or are in a position to, impose that model on 
authors of established journals. Offering choices is the 
appropriate attitude for a provider of services.

Jan Velterop

----- Original Message ----
From: Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Friday, 7 July, 2006 12:09:03 AM
Subject: Open Choice Success Clauses?

A number of publishers are now offering "open choice", optional
open access on payment of a fee in a subscription-based journal
(Oxford, Blackwell, Springer, Elsevier, PNAS).

With funding agencies either requiring or strongly encouraging
open access (several of the RCUK bodies, Wellcome Trust, NIH,
potentially FRPAA, Australian universities, and many other
policies either in effect or in the works - perhaps librarians
might want to begin thinking about the economic implications
should this approach be somewhat successful, creating a new
revenue stream for publishers.

Some of the publishers (Oxford, Springer) are promising to reduce
subscription fees based on open choice revenue.  (If there are
more publishers with such plans, my apologies for any omissions,
I would appreciate being corrected).

It seems to me to be prudent for libraries to begin looking for
some kind of "open choice success" clauses in their licenses,
especially for multi-year agreements.  Perhaps some of the
publishers have already put such clauses in place?

The idea would be, rather than agreeing to the usual sort of
pricing over a 3-year period, for example, libraries and
publishers would have the opportunity to periodicially evaluate
subscription fees, based on open choice revenue - perhaps, once a
year.

Without such a clause, libraries - especially those with
long-term agreements - could end up paying much more than they
really should, if a significant proportion of the articles ends
up being paid for through open choice (not to mention if whole
journals included in a subscription bundle move to open access
using processing fees).

It seems to me that libraries which coordinate processing fee
payments for open access, regardless of where the revenues for
these comes from (funding agencies, departmental funds, library
budgets, combinations), are in the very best position to
negotiate subscription reductions for open choice payments - they
are the ones who will know exactly how much revenue is going to
which publishers, from their institutions.

For that matter, it is the library which coordinates these fees
which is in a very good position to say to a publisher - look,
we've paid for this whole year via subscription, plus x for
optional processing fees.  Let's just deduct that processing fees
from next year's subscription costs.

Considering how many publishers have come out with "open choice"
in the near past, and OA policy developments underway, it might
be a good idea to look for a standard clause, whether the
publisher currently has an "open choice" option or not. After
all, how many publishers had these three years ago?

Could this approach, along with more straightforward payment of
OA processing fees, be the means for a gradual transition from
subscription-based payment to open access processing fee
payments, be one of the keys to a smooth transition from
subscriptions to open access?

Please note, this is not intended as an endorsement of either the
open choice or processing fee approaches, only two of a number of
business models for open access.  Let's not forget that less than
half of OA journals charge processing fees.

thoughts?

Heather G. Morrison
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com