1. New Business Models for Publishing: Open Access
Ros Pyne, Research & Development Manager, Open Research, Nature Publishing Group / Palgrave Macmillan
19 November 2014, UCL Digital Publishing Forum

2. What is open access?
“By 'open access' to [scholarly] literature we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers.” Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002)
Gold open access:
Final version of article published OA immediately on the publisher platform (publisher driven). May involve an APC.
Green open access (self archiving)
Author version is made freely available somewhere other than the publisher’s website, e.g. in a repository, or the author’s homepage typically after an embargo
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

3. Growth in open-access publishing (journals)
Not so new any more….
>9,900 fully open access journals* >1,100 in social sciences*
>1.7m open access articles*
>470 open access mandates in 100 countries**
220 institutional mandates
90 funder mandates
*DOAJ
**ROARMAP
SOURCE: Laakso, M. & Björk, B.-C. Anatomy of open access publishing: a study of longitudinal development and internal structure. BMC medicine 10, 124 (2012).
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

4. Benefits of Open Access
Making the literature as useful as it can be
Faster progress/better return on investment in research
Increases understanding (and use?) of research outside the research community (e.g. public, government)
Authors (generally) retain copyright in their work and are free to redistribute widely
Increases visibility and readership of articles1
Increases citation impact1
Facilitates interdisciplinary research and collaboration
The research literature becomes a resource for research (text/data mining)
Drives innovation in publishing e.g. speed, open data
1. For a bibliography of studies see The Open Citation Project:
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

5. How does open access affect publishers?
Open access changes…
Who has access to research
Democratisation of audience
Who controls budgets
Authors and funders now key decision-makers
Programme growth
Growth through volume (but need to maintain quality)
Value of interconnectivity
Competition
New entrants and competition from tech sector
Democratization of readership: audience shifts from almost exclusively academics, to academics + practitioners, policymakers, students, and 'curious minds'; + extends global reach.
Funders, rather than libraries, control research publication budgets, via APCs.
Academics make the final decision where to spend, no longer just the indirect influencer- we need to get better at marketing to them direct.
Allowing inter-connectivity between research in highly sophisticated way which will limit silo-ed publishing
Volume itself increases in value – quality may not be maximised if not in OR space: profit growth in the author-pays model derives from publishing more, rather than selling more and more; OR’s true value not felt if there is not a breadth of content to connect to and with.
Competition: From established, predominantly commercial, publishers, to the addition of 'start-ups' with no legacy business to maintain & often non-profit.
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

6. Challenges for (traditional) publishers
Managing shift from subscription to APC model
Reversal of trad model: growth comes from publishing more
Exposure of cost-base / need to explain how APCs are calculated
New technology needs: high initial outlay
Speed with which open access landscape is changing
Global & disciplinary variation in approach to open access and in funding
Need for author outreach to demonstrate benefits
Perception that open access means lower quality
Confusing terminology (green / gold; licence definitions)
NB HSS.
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

7. Nature Communications
Transitioning a hybrid journal to full open access 1
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

8. Making Nature Communications fully OA
Providing a high-quality open-access option
Born an OA / subscription hybrid journal (2010)
Now fully OA for all submissions from 20th October 2014
Default licence is now CC BY 4.0 – most open licence, encourages sharing and re- use.
Now the #1 multidisciplinary open access journal (2013 Impact Factor = )
Demonstrates NPG commitment to open access
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

9. Transitioning Nature Communications
Challenges and solutions
Maintaining quality
No change to editorial team, peer review process or acceptance criteria
Ensuring authors have access to OA funding
Funding support service
Waiver policy
Respecting author choice for papers submitted before transition date
Authors who submitted before 20th October can choose subscription or OA
Managing two workflows during transition period (hybrid and OA)
Communicating complex changes to librarians and authors
FAQs, marketing campaigns, interviews with industry press, briefing internal teams
Size of journal makes this particularly complex (XX articles published in 2014 YTD)
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

10. Providing an open-access option for scholarly books
Palgrave Open
Providing an open-access option for scholarly books 2
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

11. Open access at Palgrave Macmillan
June 2011: Hybrid open-access offering for Palgrave journals January 2013: Open-access option for Palgrave Pivots and monographs November 2013: First OA monograph published, ‘A History of Fungal Disease’ April 2014: Fully OA journal, Palgrave Communications, open for submissions July 2014: First hybrid OA chapter, in 'The Social Construction of Death’ October 2014: First OA Pivot, ‘Seeing Ourselves Through Technology’
To date: 2 OA monos, 1 Pivot, 1 OA chapter
In pipeline: 1 mono, 1 Pivot, 1 chapter
1 book funded by Wellcome, 1 by Japanese govt, one by author’s institution. No mandate in latter two cases.
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

12. Palgrave Macmillan’s model for OA books
First major publisher to offer CC BY default for books
Authors charged an ‘Open access publishing charge’ (=APC)
ALL online versions of book are open-access (PDF, ePub, Kindle version)
Licensed under CC BY
Print versions available at cost
We do not subsidise OA through sales of alternative formats or through secondary revenues
Why this model?
Sustainable and future-proof
Transparent
Charges associated with true costs of publishing
Consistency and simplicity
Full open-access – no compromises
NB, we recognise that
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

13. Some book-specific OA challenges
OA books still in experimental stage
Funding
Higher costs, fewer authors, books most important in HSS – funding routes only beginning to emerge
Workflows
e.g. trad book workflow involves contracting at start of process
Systems
Publisher and industry systems not set up to handle OA (esp. for hybrid chapters)
Discovery
Traditional route of discovery is via library catalogue – need to ensure OA books are visible
NB HSS.
New Business Models: Open Access | 19 November 2014

14. Thank you For more information please contact
ROS PYNE Research & Development Manager, Open Research
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