Open Access with 'author pays' model: heading for the next serials crisis?

Vinod Scaria
Center for Cybermedicine and Internet Research
Calicut

Internet Health 2003;2:5


The serials crisis- or the serials pricing crisis is now into the fourth decade. The crisis brought about by the rising prices of journals and the decreasing subscriptions have been badly affecting researchers' access to vital scholarly communication. Discussions on how to circumvent this have taken a new perspective with the advent of electronic publishing, as a media capable of drastically cutting the cost of publishing [1]

Though electronic publishing has the potential to drastically bring down the cost of publication, and distribution of copies are virtually cost-free, there is some amount of fixed costs involved -for quality assurance in the form of review, editing and production of the first copy.

Serials pricing crisis: Contributing factors

Many factors have directly or indirectly influenced the creation of this vicious circle- like rising publishing costs, profit motives, mergers and acquisitions, just to name a few. 

Profit motive is one major factor that contributed to this crisis [2]. Publishing giant Reed Elsevier, stalking the headlines with a series of acquisitions [3,4] makes close to 300m Pounds, and creates a huge profit margin of 40% [5]. The firm holds near monopoly in publishing business, with almost all standard undergraduate textbooks and revered journals now carrying an Elsevier logo.

Open Access Initiatives have come forward propagating the need for open access to all scholarly communication. Budapest Open Access Initiative [6]- funded by philanthropist George Soros is the most active among them. By open access, one means the free availability on the public internet, letting it permissible by law to read, copy, download or use in any other lawful purposes without incurring any financial, legal or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access on the Internet.

Open Access Publishing: Who bears the costs?

The BOAI [6] clearly states that the new model does not and should not infringe the right of publishers for profit. The BOAI clearly states its economic perspective as:

"There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives." 

Author pays: the widely publicized model

The 'author pays ' model is the most employed and discussed model. The economy of publishing is based on a centralized billing of processing fees from the author [in place of a distributed billing on readers]. The BioMedCentral [7], which publishes close to 100 Journals, has been the leader in this new model. This was followed by new Journals like JMIR [8], which was free to access from inception. The Public library of science, {PLoS}[9] a pressure group set up to free scholarly literature also leads the bandwagon by announcing its new publishing initiative- based on open access with author paying model.

This could be seen analogous to the television-advertising model, where the advertiser pays the channel for reaching its viewers, who often have the 'privilege' to view them free of cost!


Author pays: but will it change the scenario?


In the new model, the author pays something from $500-$1500 per article as processing charges. This is just the beginning. As more and more publishing firms come to exploit the new business opportunity, a new hierarchy of ratings will emerge, analogous to the Television ratings/Website ratings. Thus the journals would exploit the advantage to make more profit- boring into the authors' or funding agencies pockets, and a new competition to capture the best and largest viewer population- analogous to the television advertising model would emerge.

The hope that as more journals adopt this policy, the charges would come down [10] is based on misconceptions. Time has proved that more journals have not really brought down the costs in the conventional publishing model. It is to be remembered that not everything available free will have an equal and comparable impact. [If that was the case, then all television channels would have the same ratings]

In fact, this crisis has its version on the web also. There is a wide variation in Web advertising charges too. The charges at top ranking sites like Yahoo or Google are not that in a low end website on a free server [who would be glad to put up your ad in exchange for a link on your website].

The next serials crisis

The second crisis would thus be based on the inability of authors to pay for publishing their research, and analogous to the current crisis where libraries are unable to satisfy the members, funding agencies will be unable to satisfy their researchers [as researchers would always want to submit to the highest ranking journal].

It is often the budding researchers, students and those from the resource poor developing countries and developing institutes and serving in poorly funded institutions who would have to bear the brunt [11].In most developing countries, where the total per capita spending on health is less than $15 per year[12],and it is hard to assume researchers from these countries could afford to spend a huge fee to publish their research. Though waiving the processing fee on basis of financial hardship is a tweak, this is to be regarded only as a charity, with no guarantee that it would continue forever[13]. For example, JMIR waives the fee based on the grant it receives from the BOAI [14].This means when the BOAI support would end, there will be no room left for resource poor researchers in the Journal.

The author hopes that this paper would open up a debate on this topic and attract considerable thought and resources in this direction.

References

1) Arms Y. Economic Models for Open Access Publishing. iMP Magazine March 22, 2000:[Available at URL: http://www.cisp.org/imp/march_2000/03_00arms.htm]
2) Berry S. The Rationale for "Full and Open Access" of Scientific Information [Available Online at: http://www.amacad.org/publications/trans15.htm ]
3) Jones S., Cook C. Electronic Journals: Are They A Paradigm Shift? Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. 2000 5(1):1. [Available http://www.nursingworld.org/ojin/topic11/tpc11_1.htm ]
4) Lipscomb CE. Mergers in the publishing industry Bull Med Lib Assoc. 2001 July; 89 (3): 307 308
5) Reed Elsevier: subscription revenue credited for bolstering net profit 43% Wall Street Journal 21 February 2003 [ http://wsj.com/ Accessed February 21 2003 ]
6) Budapest Open Access Initiative [BOAI] [ Available Online at: http://soros.org/boai ]
7) BiomedCentral [URL: http://www.biomedcentral.com Accessed June 2, 2003]
8) Journal of Medical Internet research [URL: http://www.jmir.org Accessed June 02, 2003]
9) Public Library of Science[URL: http://www.plos.org Accessed Feb 12, 2003 ]
10) Subers P. Removing the Barriers to Research:
An Introduction to Open Access for Librarians .College & Research Libraries News, 64 (February 2003) pp. 92-94, 113
11) Scaria V. Scholarly communication in Biomedical Sciences, Open Access and the developing world. Internet Health 2003;1:1 [Full text available Online at http://www.virtualmed.netfirms.com/internethealth/articleapril03.html ]
12) Better health in Africa: experience and lessons learned. Washington, DC: World Bank; 1994
13) Prosser CD. A Unique Opportunity BMJ Rapid Responses (11 February 2003) [Available at URL: http://bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7382/182/b ]
14) JMIR instructions to Authors: [ http://www.jmir.org/instruction.htm Accessed June 01,2003 ]


Competing Interests: The author is the founder Editor of Internet Health an open access Journal.He also offers consultancy services for Open Access publishing.

Vinod Scaria is the founder Editor of Internet Health.His research interests include Cybermedicine, Electronic Publishing, Quality of Health Information on the internet, Cybermedical Ethics and related domains.
Correspondence: 
Vinod Scaria
Perumcheril,33/4711,Malaparamba,Calicut
Kerala, India 673009
E-Mail: vinodscaria@yahoo.co.in 

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