The economics of open access publishing
Bo-Christer Björk
UNICA seminar Helsinki 19.5.2006
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Effects of Internet
• Distribution is going electronic
• Also distribution models are changing
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Where to draw the line?
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Which process
Using what business model
What type of cost
Is cost equal to price?
Cost incurred by whom?
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Which process
Manuscript
Accepted manuscript
Queue for publishing
Review manuscript
Reviewers' comments
Revise manuscript
Index article
Publish article
in journal issue
Revised manuscript
Publish article
on the web
Index web source
Author charge
Acquire
access rights
Subscription
Make journal available
inside university
Search for
and retrieve
article
Read article
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Using what business model
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What type of cost
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First copy cost
Distribution costs
Overhead costs of publisher
Time costs of readers
Opportunity costs
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is cost equal to price?
• Publisher revenue = cost + profit
• In the short run yes
• In the long run more competition could
lower costs
• Example mobile telephone bills
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Cost incurred by whom
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Cost of publisher
Cost of readers
Overhead cost of libraries
Cost of reviewers time
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Getting the numbers right
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Number of titles
Number of articles
Share electronic
OA journals share
OA articles share
OA copies in
repositories, web
pages etc.
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25000 – 50000
1, 5 – 2 million
> 50 %
4-5 %
1-2 %
15-20 %
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Comparative effects of different business models
Life-cycle costs
of current readership level
Reviewing
OA
Publication
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Indexing&
Library
services
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Usage
=
Benefits from
increased readership
Preservation
Paper
=
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Electronic
=
?
Repository
Open
Access
=
?
Journal
Open
Access
=
?
Impact on
research
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Impact on
industry
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The free rider problem
• Has been proposed as argument
against author charges
• Some research intensive institutes
might end up paying more than
currently
• Lesser institutes and industry would get
a free rid
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But!
• The argument can be turned around
• Only a small proportion of subscription
money comes from the free riders
anyway
• It would be socially beneficial if these
parties would start to use research
results more
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”Level playing field”
Readers buying
access
Author
Individual
article
Journal
Pay-per view
Personal
subscription
University
Institutional
subscription
Journal
collection
”Big deal”
Research Funder
National level
Authors buying
OA provision
Author
Consortial big deal
Author charge
University
Institutional
membership
Research Funder
”Wellcome Trust”
National level
FinELib & Biomed
Central deal
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REFERENCES
For a number of publications see
Homepages of the OACS project
http://www.oacs.shh.fi/publications.html
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