Presented by: Michael A Mabe Director ofVisiting Professor Academic Relations Dept Information Science Elsevier City University, London Scholary Communication, Gothenburg, 9 December 2004 OPEN ACCESS & STM PUBLISHING

A Sense of Déjà Vu… After many years, Sherlock Holmes finally came face-face with his arch enemy, Professor Moriarty. They stared at each other for long moments. Moriarty said: “No doubt everything I am about to say has already crossed your mind.” To which Holmes responded “And, no doubt, my reply has already crossed yours. — Good day to you, Sir!”

First Scientific Journal 6th March 1665 Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Ed. Henry Oldenburg Secretary of the Royal Society First true scholarly journal Published for profit at Oldenburg’s expense

[We must be] very careful of registring as well the person and time of any new matter.., as the matter itselfe; whereby the honor of ye invention will be inviolably preserved to all posterity. [Oldenburg, 24 November 1664] all Ingenious men will be thereby incouraged to impart their knowledge and discoveryes [Oldenburg, 3 December 1664] [I should not] neglect the opportunity of having some of my Memoirs preserv’d, by being incorporated into a Collection, that is like to be as lasting as usefull [Boyle, 1665] [Phil. Trans. should be] licensed under the charter by the Council of the Society, being first reviewed by some of the members of the same.” [R.Soc. Order in Council 1/3/1665] Inventing the Journal: Oldenburg’s Letters

Peer Reviewed Journal Growth Data from Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory on CD-ROM Summer 2001 Edition Total number of active refereed learned journals in 2004: 17,700 M A Mabe The growth and number of journals Serials 16(2).191-7, 2003

Article Growth ~3% p.a. ISI Data

Relationship of Journals & Researcher Growth More researchers ⇒ more journals

Role of the Modern Journal Needs READERS constant citation authority specialisation continuity navigation Functions JOURNAL registration certification dissemination archive navigation Provided by the publisher through –third party authority (rhetorical independence) –brand identity management –long-term management of continuity –technology Needs AUTHORS ownership reputation recognition/audience renown

Current Environment The STM Market 2,000+ journal publishers –600 commercial, not for profit 18,000 active, peer reviewed journals m articles published yearly ~1 m unique authors each year ~10-15 m readers Elsevier 1,800 journals (1400 primary of which nearly 300 are for learned societies) 225,000 articles a year

Open Access A philosophy –Information freely available on www Made feasible by –Hope Content made free some period after publication on the assumption this does not damage income –“OA Lite” –Flipped business model “Author pays” rather than reader (librarian) pays –“OA Heavy” –Belief in a much reduced e-only journal cost- base

OA Claimed Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages –Freely available on the www for researchers and public alike –Researchers are believed to get higher downloads and citations –For “author pays”/OA Heavy, investment in literature support would scale with amount of research conducted –Speed of access versus interlibrary loan –A growing phenomenon Disadvantages –Creates financial barriers to publication where currently there are only quality ones Quality challenges Institutional politics –Poor authors excluded or have to be subsidised by the rest –Corporate free riders problem –OA business models unsustainable without subsidies or loss –One time payments for perpetual access

Downloads and Open Access: Evidence COUNTER compliant download characteristics for IOPP and Blackwell show very little difference between OA and subscription-based research journals of similar size, subject and audience –Important to distinguish press covered journals from majority OUP experiments in OA Lite have shown that making articles available for free after 6 months causes 6% loss; 12 months causes 3% loss in subscriptions

Citations and Open Access: ISI Evidence “OA journals have a broadly similar citation pattern to other journals, but may have a slight tendency to earlier citations.” ThomsonScientific 2004

Relation between Citations and Downloads Hank Moed, Bibliometrician, Leiden University –study to be published in J Amer. Soc. Info. Sci. Techn Detailed analysis over a number of years of citation and download characteristics for a major chemistry journal “Citations lead to downloads BUT downloads do not lead to citations”

Is OA a growing phenomenon? Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory –889 OA journals listed, not all peer reviewed, 1% of scholarly and academic journals. Of these: –49% free to all sponsored by government, university or other institutions –25% subsidized by print publication –14% author-pays model – 6% subscription journals that are free after one+ months – 5% other Decline in launches of new OA titles recorded by Ulrich’s –63 (20.5%) new OA out of 308 launched in 2001 –47 (18.4%) new OA out of 255 launched in 2002 –30 (15.2%) new OA out of 198 launched in 2003 –11 (12.4%) new OA out of 89 launched in 2004 as of September Of the 115 author-pays journals, 104 from commercial publisher BioMed Central

Bias to accept? Pressure on quality Hal Varian, Berkeley: “An economic system tends to favor those who pay. If the authors pay, then the system will lean towards the author's goal (getting published) whereas if the readers pay the system will lean towards the reader's goal (effective filtering.)”

Cornell Report: issues with “Institution pays” Structural –“[OA proposals] imply significant shifts in university resources and in the relations between the university and the output of scholars” “[At a charge of] $1,500/article, the library would require an infusion of almost $1.5M/year [if full OA were adopted]” Cultural –“Where Open Access does not respond to felt needs on the part of scholars and their disciplines, it is unlikely to gain support of authors; if it is perceived as a threat to the autonomy of scholarly communities, it will not be voluntarily adopted.”

Cornell Report: issues with “Institution pays” Censorship –“Putting fiscal control of publishing costs in the hands of departments may be unpalatable to the faculty who may view it as a loss of academic freedom.” “.. the decision of whom to fund and for what reason may be a source of controversy and may be construed as a form of censorship.” Politics –An extra-library Provost’s Fund to pay for publication.. would not seem to solve the OA funding problem. Without governance, it is even worse than our current subscription model; with governance, the potential for bureaucratic complications and political antagonisms is too great. It seems unlikely..such an arrangement would ever be tolerated by the academic community.

Corporate Free Riders 20% of subscription income is from the corporate sector – chemical, pharmaceutical, electronic etc [STM] 95% of articles are authored by academics [ISI] In OA Heavy/author pays, the corporates don’t pay to read and they author barely 5% of articles If corporate authors pay (5%) there will be a 15% shortfall in revenue in converting to OA that has to be recouped All authors (mainly academics) will have to pay one sixth more than the average publication charge to make up the difference

Poorer authors and effect on the literature “When a scientist doesn’t have a subscription, he can nonetheless get information about the article..;requesting the article can be as easy as sending an . When a scientist doesn’t have funds to publish an article, the article does not exist – does not become part of the permanent literature. That’s more than an inconvenience.” –John Ewing, AMathsSoc, Nature , 9 Oct % of papers come from the developing world [ISI Data], if they don’t pay everyone else has to pay one third more in OA Heavy/author pays

Current “Author Pays” Fees Unsustainable Drivers of cost per article: Rejection rates Format Production quality High Print + electronic High Low Electronic only Low All these costs per article have to increased by 33.3% and 16.6% = 50% to account for poorer authors and corporate free riders. This would make the average $5,700 and the Science charge $15,000 per paper, difficult for even funding bodies to afford ScienceCellImmunityBioScienceCancer Cell Est. STM Industry mean Estimated STM industry mean: (John Cox Associates) Estimated costs per article for selected journals: assumes all authors pay $thousands PloS Au charge BMC Au Charge

OA Claimed Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages –Freely available on the www for researchers and public alike –Researchers are believed to get higher downloads and citations –For “author pays”/OA Heavy, investment in literature support could scale with amount of research conducted –Speed of access versus interlibrary loan –A growing phenomenon Disadvantages –Creates financial barriers to publication where currently there are only quality ones Quality challenges Institutional politics –Poor authors excluded or have to be subsidised by the rest –Corporate free riders problem –OA business models unsustainable without subsidies or loss –One time payments for perpetual access

Researchers and OA CIBER Study 2004: –CIBER: Centre for Information Behaviour and Evaluation of Research, University College London –First quantitative measurement of author/editor awareness, attitude and behaviour towards Open Access: 3674 responses from all disciplines/nations Elsevier commissioned study 2004 –Conducted by an independent research agency using sample of 2391 Elsevier authors and editors –Respondents did not know Elsevier was the sponsor of the study

Awareness Extent of awareness of Open Access Q. How much do you know about open access journals? N=3674 CIBER study

ciber key findings: authors’ reasons for choosing the last journal in which they published 0 = no influence, 100 = strongest influence

ciber key findings: primary intended audience % of authors in strong agreement

Behaviour Extent prepared to pay [3674 respondents] Q. If all journals were open access what do you consider would be a reasonable payment to have your paper published in the best journal in your field? N=3674 CIBER study

ciber key findings: authors as readers: views on journal access % of authors expressing an opinion

Elsevier Commissioned Study: Awareness Support for OA among researchers, but it is uninformed –many of the journals listed as OA are not OA journals –Several are Elsevier journals –OA is associated with BMC (19%) and PLOS (12%) but also with Elsevier (>19%) Positive association of OA with “online” and “free” Negative association with “author pays” Online availability and free at point of use being associated with OA sentiment N = 2391

Q. If your institution or organization were to cancel all subscriptions to scholarly journals and encourage you to use only Open Access journals, would you… Q. If all journals were Open Access, what do you consider would be a reasonable payment to have your paper published in the best journal in your field? After an Open Access Model defined as: “Open access journals use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access. In an open access journal, readers are able to read, download, copy, distribute, and print papers and other materials freely from the web. The costs are met by charging authors or their institutions for publishing their papers.” Elsevier Commissioned Study: Behaviour

Researchers Comments on OA Journals We have held off contributing to these journals until Oxbridge or UC London does. A great idea but it is hard to get people to do something altruistically for free forever. Someone still has to do the work. After a while they get burned out. In commercial publishing, they make a profit and that is an incentive to keep working. Well as long as they were thoroughly reviewed I do not have a problem The concept of a scientist or an author bearing the cost of publication would never be popular [in the UK]. It’s great. Think of the time savings alone.

Researchers Comments on OA Doesn’t that mean the journal is available online for a fee? They make their money by charging submission fees to authors Defining the concept as ‘free access’ is wrong. Someone still has to pay. It’s just shifted from reader to author Your ability to read scholarly journals is not dependent on your ability to pay for them… Both PLoS and BioMed Central were started with huge grants. Neither of them run on a pure “author pays” model.

Researchers’ Concerns about OA Concerns about Open Access include: –Content dominated by wealthy countries and researchers who can afford fees –Impact factor is not yet established –Perception that the articles are not reviewed –Temptation of journals to publish a poor quality article just for the publication fees –Researcher’s career and reputation might suffer from publishing in Open Access journals –Possibility of journal failing and articles being unavailable –Author retains copyright and responsibility for protecting it –Industry will have fewer or no profits to reinvest in technology –Open Access journals will only contain the articles that were rejected by other publishers –The ‘author pays’ model is just another form of Vanity Press.

Researchers and OA: Summary Open Access is: –Something they have heard of –Something they are open to considering –Discussed with increasing frequency –Initially, very appealing “How can you be opposed to free access to scientific information?” –Something they think is going to change the way some journals are published Open Access is not: –Well understood –Something they have made their mind up about –Going to completely replace subscription- based publishing

Who can be against free access? But, in the context of: –Editorial independence –Access to publication outlets unaffected by Ability to pay – positive and negative Decisions made by someone other than the author –Responsible assurance of the article’s integrity and its permanent archiving –Sustainable business models Be mindful not to damage something that actually works –It’s not about publishing per se, it’s about science

OA, Elsevier and the Future Like Cornell, we believe that the global market of scholars will and should decide this issue We are sceptical about OA but remain uncommitted to any particular model Business model issues will resolve in their normal competitive way: those that work will survive Evolutionary response by Elsevier to market forces now and in the future –Continued pressure to keep price increases down –Continuous review of our pricing models GREEN –Author-posting of final ms. versions on IRs: “GREEN” –Cell Press announcement Our Goal: –Expanding access with sustainable models that allow for investment for the future and a new Win-Win-Win for researchers/librarians and publishers