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Re: Matt Cockerill's comments
Although I have a lot of admiration for what Hindawi is doing I
cannot accept the assertions you are maiking Paul. How do you
know authors will act in the way that you suggest? It is possible
that those funding them will act in this way i.e. make their own
calculations about what is a good deal. I wonder how they will
tell.
Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: <paul.peters@hindawi.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 26, 2007 11:58 PM
Subject: RE: Matt Cockerill's comments
Professor Feinman,
While you are certainly correct that publishers will try to
maximize the revenue of their journals regardless of whether
they are open access or subscription-based, the ability of a
publisher to charge significantly more than their service is
worth will be greatly reduced in an open access model. The
reason for this is quite simple; "gold" open access publishing
will lead to a more efficient market.
There are several inefficiencies within the subscription market
that will be reduced or eliminated in an open access world.
1)If authors are responsible for paying the costs associated
with publishing in a particular journal, there will be a
greater pressure on publishers to keep their prices at a
competitive level. In the subscription world, authors generally
do not take the price of a journal into consideration when
choosing where to submit their work. While there certainly are
exceptions, authors tend to submit to journals based on their
prestige, speed, production quality, etc. In an open access
world, authors would still take into consideration the
prestige, speed, and production quality of a journal, but they
would also tend to pay greater attention to the costs
associated with each journal. Authors willing to pay a higher
Article Processing Charge to publish in a journal with faster
publication speeds or a better reputation would certainly be
free to do so, but publishers would be under far greater
pressure to keep their prices in line with the services that
they provide.
2)In an open access world, it would be much easier to determine
the costs associated with publishing in a given journal. Adding
to the problems described in the point above, the
subscription-based publishing model makes it nearly impossible
for anyone apart from a journal's publisher to know how much
revenue is collected per article. Since one cannot easily tell
how many subscribers a journal has, it is impossible to know
the 'cost' (whether it is paid on the author's side or on the
reader's side) of publishing in a particular journal. So even
the most conscientious of authors have a difficult time
avoiding 'overpriced' journals in the subscription world.
3)In an open access world, the barrier to entry for new
publishers, or new journals from existing publishers, will be
less than in the subscription world. Since a subscription-based
journal must attract a certain number of subscribers in order
to break even, which generally takes years even for the most
successful of titles, it is very difficult to establish new
journals to compete with well-established titles, even if the
new journal provides a significantly better service at a lower
price. Moreover, having a small number of subscribers means
that a new journal will have a very limited readership, which
makes it even more difficult to get a new subscription-based
title off-the-ground. In an open access world, if authors in a
particular field do not have any reasonably priced journals in
which to publish, it will not be too long until some 'greedy'
publisher comes along and creates a new journal that can
provide a better value for these authors.
While open access publishers will be just as concerned with the
financial success of their journals as subscription-based
publishers, their ability to charge more than their service is
worth will be greatly reduced. While increased access is
certainly the main benefit of open access publishing in the
short run, a more efficient market for scholarly publishing may
prove to be its greatest benefit in the long run.
Because of the reasons mentioned above, I have mixed feelings
about the Wellcome Trust and CERN policies towards 'gold' open
access publishing. The hidden benefit of 'gold' open access is
that it provides a solution to many of the problems that exist
within the subscription market. Unfortunately, neither the
policy of the Wellcome Trust nor that of CERN's SCOAP3 have a
mechanism for increasing the competition between publishers, so
one cannot expect that they will lead to greater efficiency in
the publishing market. If funders offer publishers a certain
amount of money for each article they publish (say $3,000),
publishers will have no incentive to charge any less than that
amount.
The best approach for research funders to take is simply to
allow their grant recipients to include publication charges in
their grant requests, just as they do for expenses related to
attending a conference. This way, researchers will be able to
choose how much of their research funds they would like to
spend on publishing in a journal, funds which could otherwise
be spent on conferences, graduate students, equipment, etc...
Only by making the costs of a journal visible to authors can we
expect to see a more efficient market, since authors (not
research funders, university departments, librarians, or
readers) choose where articles are published.
As Matt said in his email:
Under an open access publishing model, you immediately have a
much more effective market. The customer (the research
community) can choose the publication service that offers the
best value, ensuring that prices are kept down. This kind of
'substitutability' generally doesn't exist with the
subscription model - hence the problem of journal inflation.
-------------------------------
Paul Peters
Head of Business Development
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
http://www.hindawi.com
-------------------------------