Open Access Publishers’ Payment Programs

Caroline Sutton

Co-founder, Co-Action Publishing

President, OASPA

www.oaspa.org

Co-Action Publishing is an international open access

scholarly publisher, with a growing portfolio of peer-

reviewed scholarly journals spanning different

scientific disciplines. The company is registered as a

limited liability company in Sweden, and is wholly-

owned by the three founding partners.

www.co-action.net

Co-Action Publishing

Established October 2008 by:

BioMed Central

Co-Action Publishing

Copernicus Publications

Hindawi Publishing Corporation

Journal of Medical Internet Research (Gunther Solomon)

Medical Education Online (David Solomon)

Public Library of Science (PLoS)

SAGE Publications

SPARC Europe

Utrecht University Library (Igitur)

Background

OA publishers lacked a voice in public debates aboutscholarly communications and Open Access

Open Access had become an established part of thepublishing landscape; it was time to address practicalissues

Need to develop uniform standards and best practices

Need to bring together the Open Access publishingcommunity

Need to share information and work collectively

OASPA represents both professional publishingorganizations as well as scholar publishers and welcomes other organizations whose work supports OA publishing.

OASPA Mission

To support and represent the interests of Open Access (OA) journal publishers globally in all scientific, technical, and scholarly disciplines.

To accomplish this mission, the association will:

Exchange information

Set standards

Advance models

Advocate for OA publishing

Educate

Promote innovation

Members

15 Professional Publishing Organizations

14 Scholar Publishers

4 Other organizations

24 Associate Members

A number of applications under review

New in 2011 – Membership open to OA Books

publishers

Size of publishers

Size of publisher by

number of DOAJ

journals

DOAJ

publishers

% DOAJ journals %

1 2271 88% 2271 56%

2 to 9 287 11% 849 21%

10 to 49 25 1% 358 9%

≥ 50 5 0% 554 14%

Total 2588 4032

Panayiota Polydoratou and Ralf Schimmer :Scholarly journals and

underlying business models’ attributes: preliminary findings from

analysing DOAJ journal level metadata,

Proceedings ELPUB2010 – Conference on Electronic Publishing

June 2010 – Helsinki, Finland.

Frantsvåg: The Size Distribution of open access

publishers: A problem for open access? Volume 15,

Number 12- 6 December 2010.

“87.9 percent of all publishers publish only a single

journal while the larger publishers (with more than

10 journals) total 1.1 percent of all publishers and

publish 23.3 percent of all journals. “

But also the TA picture is similar, with over 87% of

publishers, publishing only a single journal.

Growth in published articles

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35000

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 est

ACP

NJP

OE

Hindawi

PLoS

BioMed Central

Growing at the Rate of 45% Per Year Since 2004

Published Articles from Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics,the New Journal of Physics, Optics Express, Hindawi, BioMedCentral, and the Public Library of Science

Slide courtesy of Paul Peters, Hindawi Publishing Corporation (Oct. 2009)

Growth in submissions and Publications at PLoS

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5000

10000

15000

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25000

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Submissions

Publications

Thanks to Mark Patterson, PLoS for sharing this slide and

the next two slides.

BMC

Copernicus

PLoS

Hindawi

Growth in OA

Thanks to Mark Patterson for sharing the slide and to

BMC, Hindawi and Copernicus for sharing data.

0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Growth in OA articles:BMC, PLoS and Hindawi

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5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

35000

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Thanks to Mark Patterson, PLoS for sharing this slide.

And to Matt Cockerill, BMC; Paul Peters, Hindawi.

The next six slides are from a report by Anuar

Shafiei on “Payment Methods”, 2010.

See also video at www.river-valley.tv (OASPA)

Bulk payment programs

26 OASPA members participated

These published a total of 591 open access journal

titles.

Of these, 472 journals have article processing

charges (79.9% of all titles) and 119 have no

article processing charges (20.1%).

9 of 11 (publishers with charges) have some form

of an institutional membership program

All who charge fees, have some form for a waiver

policy

APC levels of OASPA members

Publishers were asked to provide their average fee

per article, the highest fee they charged, and the

lowest fee they charged.

Average of averages is 926 USD / article.

Average highest 1322 USD

Average lowest fee 482 USD

A majority of members in favor of further exploring

the idea of a payment clearance house.Report by Anuar Shafiei on “Payment Methods”, 2010.

See also video at www.river-valley.tv (OASPA)

13. What is the greatest advantage of the bulk payment plan for you as a

publisher?

Wider acceptance of the OA concept and smoother flow from submission to

publication.

It encourages submissions from authors that are affiliated with a member institute.

Very few subscribers. So no advantage obtained

A bulk payment plan would save use the cost and effort of developing a sales

team/program to sell our payment program into institutions. This in turn would

help us to keep our publication fees as low as possible.

Reducing financial barrier to authors, and so encouraging greater number of

manuscript submissions. Also, provides opportunity to actively involve the

library/institution in OA advocacy.

Takes the burden of administrative processes from author's shoulders. May (not in

our case) enable scientists without larger research budgets to publish OA (if their

institution offers these specific budgets).

14. What is the greatest advantage of the bulk payment plan for participating

libraries or institutions according to you?

Faulty and members are pleased.

It helps them to encourage their authors to publish their work in open access

journals by removing any financial barriers that may exist.

It there are many subscribers, this will reduce cost to authors

Such plans normally require more administration - we do not see any great

advantages.

In future with a high volume of OA charges, such a payment plan would cut

administrative costs of making and managing payments to multiple publishers.

However, given current volumes, the current advantage is probably the possibility

of covering fees for authors on publications in a wider array of journals from

multiple publishers.

Incentivizes authors to choose OA (which is in interest of author, their funder, and

the institution). Creates level playing-field with subscription titles. Reduces

administrative burden of handling lots of individual payments.

Institutions and libraries have a direct and complete record of their scientists'

output at every publishing house. Easier administration also for accounting due

to less invoices, etc.

15. What challenges do you experience in managing a bulk payment plan?

Renewals follow up, if annual.

We do not have the sales infrastructure in place to actively approach potential

institutional members, which has limited our membership program to a relatively

small number of institutes. Moreover, given that our memberships are priced at a

discount to our normal article processing charges, it would be difficult to justify

any significant investment in order to attract new members.

Getting paid on time.

As we are just getting started, our greatest challenge is in identifying decision

makers at institutions such that we can present our program and hopefully sign

an agreement.

projecting the cost of what that lump sum should be and if the projections. You

can't anticipate how much the institution will publish and if they publish to much it

is hard to cut them off because this is lag time of when the paper is submitted

and accepted which you still need to honor.

Significant technical effort to design systems to efficiently manage membership,

and handle reporting etc. Ongoing administrative/account management effort to

ensure customers have reports and info they need, that funds are allocated, and

that debts are not allowed to build up.

Difficult to implement in the automatic manuscript tracking and accounting due to

specific regulations of each institution. Standards would be great :-)

16. What are in your experience the challenges for libraries/institutions to cover the

charges?

Not encouraging. The model is not suitable to the current budgeting- which will encourage

individual Department to own this burden.

Libraries do not have the funds, are biased towards the big players (BMC, PLOS) neglecting

smaller OA publishers, and generally seem not to feel responsible for APCs

Open access institutional membership fees represent a new expense for libraries, and given

the budgetary constraints that many libraries are facing, it can be difficult to find the resources

to cover these costs. Moreover, as open access journals continue to grow, the costs of paying

for these memberships will increase, and it is not clear that there will be any savings to offset

these costs in the short-run.

As an officer of OASPA I have received communications from librarians who are uncertain as

to whether a specific publisher meets quality criteria that they would support. I have also

spoken with librarians that do manage central funds. I have heard that these funds are so

popular that the budgeted amount is often used up before the end of the year.

Projecting how much the institution will publish. If FRPAA is passed that might increase

submissions. IF of PLoS will affect our projection but it is hard to anticipate how much.

Library budgets are tight as a result of the cost of big deals, and economic circumstances. OA

fees, unlike subscriptions, are variable, and the greater the uptake of OA, the greater the

cost.

Non-library central funding channels for publication costs are only just starting to emerge.

Many (European) institutions have no explicit publishing fee budget and are not flexible

enough to transfer from their subscription budgets. Many political changes inside the

institution have to be done to enable a bulk payment contract.

Examples of basic structures

Hindawi Publishing Corp.= flat rate institutional fee that covers

all fees for all authors from the member institution.

Public Library of Science (PLoS) = annual membership fee that

entitles institution’s authors to a discount off regular APCs as

well as other benefits.

BioMed Central (BMC) = Combination of the above based on

institution’s preference. Flat fee to cover all authors’ charges

for an institution OR membership entitling rebate.

Co-Action Publishing = membership entitles institution to rebate

on APCs.

At present, membership is primarily at the institutional level,

although several OA publishers are in discussions with

consortia, and BMC has some in place.

Other trends to note

Mix of publishers

Mixed model publishers (toll access and open access

portfolios)

Large number of smaller publishing houses and independent

journals

New titles, open access titles

Growth among small and medium-sized publishers and

societies, as well as among large publishing houses

Open Access books growing (Soc Sci & Humanities)

Changes in payment mechanisms ?, need to manage

payment mechanisms