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What is the future of open access publishing?

Celina Ramjoué

7 October 2015 - updated 4 years ago
14 comments
Total votes: 4

What is the future of open access publishing? Green? Gold? Or something else altogether?

On 12 October 2015, the European Commission hosted a Workshop on "Alternative Open Access Publishing Models: Exploring New Territories in Scholarly Communication" designed to pool information and expertise on how to move forward the debate on open access to publications.

The event was fully webstreamed and could be followed on Twitter under #AlterOA.

Why did we run this workshop? After the Commission announced its rules on open access in Horizon 2020 in late 2013, it quickly became clear that there are many different ways of complying with the open access to publications mandate, one of the central requirements of the policy. Discussions soon went beyond the classic "green versus gold open access" discussion (green: depositing articles in an online repository and granting open access after an embargo periods; gold: paying scientific publishers a fee upfront to provide open access on publication).

New and alternative open access publishing models are emerging. These could optimise existing arrangements and put forward new ones.

- Which models exist?

- How do they work?

- Why have they been chosen and how have they evolved?

- What works well in these models and what challenges still need to be addressed?

Whether or not you participated in the workshop, your opinions on these questions are needed! Please post your input here.

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Comments

Celina Ramjoué,

18/12/2015 16:28

Dear AlterOA discussants,

First and foremost, we would like to thank everyone for their contributions on this platform. We really appreciate your taking the time to comment.

One thing is clear: the Green and the Gold OA models are definitely not the only Open Access publishing models!

We cannot be exhaustive in this post, but would like to highlight a few themes raised.

The workshop that the EC organized gave an overview of several OA emerging models, freemium being one of them. It is interesting to read in the comments that this model has been used by international organisations such as the OECD. And other OA emerging models are also being considered, for example the publicly supported diamond model, which include the provisions that authors should not pay APCs and that they should retain their copyright.

A concept that has come up is "fair" open access. A general idea here seems to be that researchers should keep more control over and more input into the way in which they publish scientific literature.

A further emerging issue is that of how to choose a place to publish in OA. In this context, the Quality Open Access Market (QOAM) could help as it aims at independently referencing and analysing/evaluating the OA publishing venues. Regarding the quality of OA publications themselves, KeeeX may offer added value by enriching them with metadata on integrity, authenticity and ownership.

And, last but certainly not least, some of you mention funding and ask the EC to consider funding new OA models instead of paying APCs as this tends to maintain the current system.

Once again, we thank every contributor for having enriched the debate on alternative OA publishing models and we encourage each of you to continue sharing with us your experiences!

The Digital Science team in DG CONNECT

Sebastian Nordhoff,

26/11/2015 17:31

Many new business models are being piloted with starting subsidies. This is probably a very good way to try out new ideas. In the current funding landscape, it is comparatively easy to get funding for a project with no commercial earnings. It is much more difficult to get funding for a project with some commercial earnings, but which are not sufficient yet. This means, however, that it is very difficult for projects to be weaned from EU alimentation. As soon as they pass the stage of infant, they are expected to be fully self-sustaining, which is hardly ever the case. As a result, we end up with a lot of infants, but no grown-ups.

26/11/2015 17:30

I really like the print-on-demand market. There are many different service providers to choose from, and if I am not happy with one, I can choose another one. There are very low costs of switching, meaning that a new actor on the market can easily try out different service providers. In my view, the EC should try to establish a similar situtation for the other aspects of publishing as well, so that researchers mounting a publishing project can easily choose the components they need and connect them. Disclaimer: I am a full supprter of scholarly owned publishing. I do believe that scholars should be in charge of the publication process. At the same time, I do NOT believe that scholars should acquire competences in judging the quality of printing ink or some other petty details. Rather, they should leave this task to service providers and only concentrate on the high level aspects.

The EC as a policy maker is responsible for the budget it gets from European taxpayers. It should try to establish legislation which ensures an optimal return on the investment the EU and its member states make. Market forces can help bring down the price, but occasionally, markets will fail. It is important to identify the subareas where market forces are useful, and the areas where they will not work.

Publishing consists of plenty of different processes, ranging from copy-editing to distribution. Most of these processes operate on functioning markets (ink, typesetting, shipping). If a service provider charges too much, the customer can choose another one. An area where markets will not provide a good allocation of funds in academia is branding. I will illustrate this with a though experiment. Suppose you have the "Journal of A", charging 1000 EUR APCs and the "Journal of B", charging 1000 EUR as well. Both have exactly the same cost structure and target the same subfield. The quality of submissions is the same random function for both. It will turn out that in the first year, one of the two will be slightly better than the other. Suppose A is better. This will mean, that in the following year, A will attract more quality submissions. The gap will increase with every year from now on. Note that this has nothing to do with the quality of the editorial work. It is a positive feedback loop. Eventually, A can increase the APCs because the prestige it provides to researchers is greater than B's. Since its costs are still the same, this means it makes a benefit. B will slowly drop out of business, and A can charge monopoly prices. This is what we see for Nature, Science or Cell, but also for other flagship journals.

In other words, authors submitting to journals with APCs will contribute towards that very journal becoming more expensive in the next round.

This is an area where market forces do not work. Therefore, we should strive to remove brands from the market. Fair Open Access asks for journal titles/brands to remain with the editors. This is a very good solution I think. If the editors feel that their publishing house is overcharging, they can shift to another one, as is necessary for a working market. If, on the other hand, the brand is with the publishing house, there is no way how the editors can react to overcharging. Still, it leaves the power in the hands of the actors on the market, rather than relegating the finding of the "right" price for APCs to government regulation.

Witold Kieńć (not verified),

20/10/2015 17:59

I've wrote a post collecting some of the ideas from the EC Workshop on Alternative Open Access Publishing Models:

http://openscience.com/will-we-find-a-good-research-communication-model-...

Here is some excerpt:

Surprisingly, a lot of experimental models discussed during the event employed well known author-side publication fees to some extent. The main alternative presented to the publishing fees model was a consortium model. But will one library be able to and want to become a member of 5, 10 or 15 different consortia? Or will it be too time-consuming for librarians? Or is this model calculated to create a monopoly in the long term?

Other alternative models presented in my opinion have little chance to work in more than a few cases.

The most interesting part, was the general discussion, not considering any particular model. Ralf Schimmer from Max Planck Digital Library called “to end subscriptions now” and to shift all money that libraries spend on toll access journals to open access publishing. But in my opinion Schimmer did not get any closer to the idea of HOW to do it.There was also a call by Saskia de Vries, Natalia Grygierczyk and Johan Rooryck for “fair open access” which they defined as the model where:

– copyright rests with the authors (so employing a Creative Commons license),
– journal title rests with the editors,
– there are low APCs.

Point 1 and 3 are quite easy to meet, for a commercial publisher also, and there is a lot of open access journals that already do this. The second point might be more problematic from the publishers’ point of view.

For more details view the post:

Peter Suber (not verified),

12/10/2015 19:34

For a start, see the list of OA journal business models maintained at the Open Access Directory.
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models

(Disclaimer: While the list is open to public edits, like everything else in the OAD, most of it so far is from me and a research assistant, Emily Kilcer.)

Marie Farge,

12/10/2015 09:10

The group of mathematicians who wrote the declaration 'The Cost of Knowledge' (calling to boycott Elsevier) proposed in June 2012 the 'Diamond Open Access' model, where authors do not pay article processing charges (APCs) and keep their copyright (they license their papers under CC-BY), and journals do not belong to their publisher but to their board of editors. With such a model publishers are no more content owners but become service providers. Consequently boards of editors can choose where and under which conditions to publish their journal. Many journals already exist under this model and a new journal of mathematics 'Discrete Analysis' has recently been launched with this model.

Our group 'Cost of Knowledge' also asked that funding agencies do not pay APCs to publishers, but instead provide for free (to the peer-reviewed journals they select) editing and publishing platforms (developed in open source software). For more information about 'Diamond Open Access' and publishing platforms, see the links proposed below.

Unfortunately I cannot attend the workshop on 'The future of Open Access Publishing' held in Brussels because on October 12, 13, 14th I participate to another conference on open access in Paris (http://jao2015.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/5), where we will announce the platform Dissemin that is a new free service for 'Green Open Access' (http://dissem.in).

Marie Farge
Ecole Normale Superieure Paris

Documents in English:

- Note I wrote in June 2012 for the French minister Genevieve Fioraso
http://wavelets.ens.fr/BOYCOTT_ELSEVIER/MARIE_FARGE/2012_NOTE_POUR_LA_MI...

- Video of a conference I gave in May 2015 at the National Library of Sweden
(Go to 59 minutes when I present 'Diamond Open Access')
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwLYKghCzk

- Blog written by Tim Gowers in September 2015 announcing the new journal 'Discrete Analysis'
http://wavelets.ens.fr/BOYCOTT_ELSEVIER/BLOGS/2015_09_10_Tim_Gowers_Disc...

Documents en français:

- Note que j'ai écrite en Juin 2012 pour la ministre Geneviève Fioraso
http://wavelets.ens.fr/BOYCOTT_ELSEVIER/MARIE_FARGE/2012_NOTE_POUR_LA_MI...

- Vidéo d'une conférence que j'ai donnée à l'ENS-Paris en Mai 2014 sur le 'Diamond Open Access'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW9YJFc8tMs

- Vidéo d'une conference que j'ai donnée a l'Open World Forum en Octobre 2014 sur 'Le futur des publications scientifiques'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLYgPjkhjDE

Marie Farge (not verified),

11/10/2015 23:07

Unfortunately I cannot attend the workshop in Brussels because on October 12, 13, 14th I participate to another conference on open access in Paris (http://jao2015.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/5), where we will announce the platform Dissemin that is a new free service for 'Green Open Access' (http://dissem.in).

leo waaijers (not verified),

11/10/2015 13:15

Discussing business models is one thing, but their ultimate test is authors' choice at the end of the day. "We do firmly believe a benefit of open access is the transparency in the cost of publishing, which enables authors to see up front what each journal charges and make an informed decision based on the service the journal offers." says Carrie Calder, Strategy Director, Nature Publishing Group.

Quality Open Access Market (https://www.qoam.eu/) is the answer. It is based on academic crowd sourcing, independent of publishers. Libraries analyse the transparency of a journal’s website with respect to the editorial board, peer review, governance and workflow. Authors share their experience with a journal. QOAM also has price information. Thus a genuine market comes into being, realised by and for academia.

Today QOAM has 2400+ scored journals and 16.000+ waiting to be scored. This is not enough for a well functioning open access market. So, spread the word. Without a market we may have open access, but at a price that even exceeds subscriptions. A special flyer for the forthcoming OA week stipulates this (http://www.vsnu.nl/files/documenten/Domeinen/Onderzoek/Open%20access/Fly...).

Laurent Henocque,

09/10/2015 16:17

Hi Celina, all,

I am the founder of KeeeX (http://keeex.me). We are leveraging a patented innovation allowing to augment virtually any file with integrity/authenticity/linking cleartext searchable metadata that opens new perspectives for Open Access (and more generally Open Data).

- file integrity and authorship are builtin.
- references to other papers and documents, semantic classification and context are builtin.
- wherever a file is found, it can be verified as genuine using our simple client or a web site.

This means that Open Research can be published *anywhere*: including a publicly available cloud folder.
This means that Open Access documents can be retrieved using general purpose search engines.
This also means that any document that refers to another document, if keeexed, will allow to embed the exact identifier to its references, that can themselves be searched then verified locally as genuine.

Of course we provide a paid solution for businesses, but also we develop an academic program, and in any case producing some amount of publishable documents will be possible using the free version.

I'd be extremely happy to help anyone reading this to test KeeeX, for instance in the purpose of studying its potential in Open Access.

Toby Green (not verified),

07/10/2015 23:33

What can you do if, for whatever reason, Green and Gold are not available as publishing options? At OECD Publishing, we publish around 400 new books annually, 100 working papers and about 30 journal articles a year. Our mandate is to 'maximise dissemination' but we also have to self-fund 90% of the cost of publishing. In order to achieve the first mandate, we have to make all our content free, but in order to achieve the second, we have to sell something. The solution that we've developed is Freemium Open Access. All the content is free to read (and share) online and then we offer premium services around the content for those who choose to pay. Premium services include file formats, like PDF, Excel and ePub which allow the user to do more with the content than simply read it. We also provide the usual set of services to subscribing institutions, like MARC records and Counter usage data plus online and offline customer support. One advantage of our solution over Green OA is that it does not require a parallel workflow (to process, load and host manuscripts into a repository) and the user journey is identical for both free users and subscribers. The free, read-only, file is a facsimile of the version of record, so free users can be confident they are seeing the same version of the content as subscribers. There is no embargo period either. Free users and subscribers can cite in the same way, confident that all users will be able to access the content via the same DOI - this is not possible with Green OA. We've been running this model for the past three years and our revenue stream from subscribers has remained stable, so it looks like this model is sustainable. We've seen a strong increase in usage - both of the free and premium versions - and we seem to be stablising at 80:20 free:premium usage. Importantly, our stakeholders are very supportive of this model and we're getting hardly any complaints from non-subscribers that they have to pay to get a PDF or other premium file (last year we received fewer than a dozen complaints and recorded 18 million accesses to our content). The read-only file is shareable via social media sites and embeddable too, so anyone can add our content to their websites without seeking permission, for free. Finally, on some occasions a funder would prefer that the PDF file is available to anyone, for free, so we offer an APC option too; therefore, Freemium Open Access is not incompatible with Gold if a funder would like to make a premium component available to all.
You can see how it works by going to www.oecd-ilibrary.org - choose a publication and you'll see one of the full text options is call 'READ'. This is the free, read-only, version available to all.
If you'd like more details - do contact me on toby.green@oecd.org

Georg Botz (not verified),

08/10/2015 14:15

It's a first step for OECD to set content free online. But in my view, the way how this is done is disappointing for many reasons, e.g.

"The free, read-only, file is a facsimile of the version of record"
This means in effect that in the OECD iLibrary only *pictures* of the pages are dispayed in JPEG format.
It is not possible to make use of some of the most elementary techniques of discovery, e.g. you cannot perform any search. It is not possible to perform any content mining at all.

Users can only download single pages one by one (remember: the pictures of a page only!), but not an article at once. Therefore you have to be online in order to read through a lengthy text.

I' wondering whether the content in the OECD iLibrary is included in any indexing service.

According to the information on one of the recent publications (DOI:10.1787/5js33l1jcpwb-en), users have to apply for permission to reproduce or to translate all or part of the content.

In summary: The content available at the OECD iLibrary website is not open access (yet). I really hope that this is not meant to be an enduring model but a step in the transition process to full open access.

12/10/2015 10:26

It may be disappointing, but no surprise that OECD iLibrary is not fully open access - we lack the funding to go fully open access. OA is a business model and, in the absence of author-side funding or grants, we have no option but to use a model where the content is freely accessible and premium services are offered on the 'reader-side' to cover publishing costs.
Two other comments:
1. yes, we currently require users to ask for permission to reproduce and/or translate our work, this is for quality-assurance and reputational-risk-management reasons (we have had instances where our content was re-used poorly and therefore presented a risk to our reputation).
2. if anyone wants to text-mine our content, they simply have to ask (so far, no-one has!)

David (not verified),

07/10/2015 18:29

I'm putting this question to the group to prompt discussion as I believe that Publishers, Funding Bodies and Academia have a duty of care to the communities they serve and work within. There are a growing number of predatory Publishers who chase monetary gain, but who have little interest in the quality of research produced and even less interest in authors and their professional well-being. Admittedly this point doesn't necessarily address the question of OA models, but - I believe - is one that should be considered with the future of Open access publishing in mind.

Digital4Science

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