Rapid Responses to:
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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Publishing's getting expensive!
- Douglas Carnall (3 January 2003)
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Fee waivers
- James E. Till (6 January 2003)
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Open Access monopoly may threaten smaller journals
- Gunther Eysenbach (8 January 2003)
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Re: Open Access monopoly may threaten smaller journals
- Stevan Harnad (10 January 2003)
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Re: Re: Open Access monopoly may threaten smaller journals
- Gunther Eysenbach (12 January 2003)
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No monopolies: Open Access, Open Markets
- Jan Velterop (15 January 2003)
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Re: No monopolies: Open Access, Open Markets
- Gunther Eysenbach (17 January 2003)
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"open access"
- Fintan Steele (19 January 2003)
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Re: Re: No monopolies: Open Access, Open Markets
- Christian Schmidt (20 January 2003)
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Re: Publishing's getting expensive!
- Panayotis T. Tassios (4 February 2003)
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Paying for scientific paper publication
- Joyce E Kent (7 April 2003)
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Douglas Carnall, general practitioner E81AJ
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Wow! £936 to have your article published! That's
expensive. It should cost a reasonably efficient
organisation about £100 to peer review an article: Even if a sub-editor takes another day or two to get the article in shape this wouldn't come to £800. £936! You could buy a webserver and a couple of years of internet connection for that, and do it yourself. That Harold Varmus must be on a good salary! Or perhaps it is being priced to fail? Oh well. One way or another knowledge will out. Competing interests: I run a webserver to publish my own work and have a vision of a free, democratic future in which others do likewise. |
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James E. Till, Senior Scientist Emeritus University Health Network, Toronto, Canada M5G 2M9
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It would be very interesting to know more about the basis for the dissemination fees proposed by the Public Library of Science (PloS). Some information, including information about fee waivers, is provided at the Journals section of the PloS website: http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/journals.htm: "... we will substantially reduce or waive the publication fees for any authors for whom they would be a burden". Another open access publisher in the biomedical sciences, which has lower dissemination fees, is BioMed Central: http://www.biomedcentral.com/.
Competing interests: I am a supporter of the Budapest Open Access Initiative: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/ |
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Gunther Eysenbach, Associate Professor University of Toronto, M5G 2C4
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As editor and publisher of a small but (in my opinion) high quality Open Access journal (the Journal of Medical Internet Research - www.jmir.org - which is open access since inception in 1999, and which recently introduced an article processing fee of 500$) I can't help feeling threatened by a powerful organization such as PLoS with 9 Mio$ in the back and influential people at the top. I wonder why - if you have 9 Million $ - you still need to charge the authors three times more than we charge for a JMIR article, although we do not have any funding for the journal (except 500$ mini-grants for fee wavers for needy authors from the Soros Foundation). On the other hand, it is good that the PloS fee is so high - otherwise smaller Open Access journals such as ours that need to charge a fee would be in trouble. PLoS might accidentally destroy what it means to foster: Open Access journals. I wish foundations and scientists (peer-reviwing and writing for journals) would support groups of scientists taking publishing into their own hands using the web, rather than supporting megalomaniac organizations that aim to centralize and dominate. Open Access has been made possible through the Internet, and the Internet is a wonderful decentralized medium. Let's keep it that way. We are just trying to free ourselves from the oligarchy of large publishing houses - why do we need to create a new mega-organization that tries monopolize publishing? Establishing a online journal, setting up a peer-review system, and getting the journal indexed in bibliographic databases is not rocket science. The group of editors that runs JMIR has decided that it neither needs BMC nor PLoS for that. PLoS should stay what it was - an advocacy group - but not entering into a competition with existing Open Access journals. If PLoS wants to use the 9 Million $ wisely, they should use it to support existing Open Access journals rather than competing with them. Competing interests: I am the (unpaid) editor and publisher of an open access journal (www.jmir.org). This journal is independent from BMC and PLoS - and it should stay that way! |
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Stevan Harnad, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience Universite du Quebec a Montreal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3P8
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Gunther Eysenbach has a point, but I think his own point contains the basis for its own reply; Yes, a $1500 author charge by an open-access journal seems high, but surely that *favors* journals charging less! High charges are not a plus, but a minus for a new journal. It also seems rather premature (optimistic) to speak of a "monopoly" among open-access journals -- given that there are still so few of them (out of the 20,000 peer-reviewed journals, almost all of them toll-access, at the present time). David Goodman, in the American Scientist Forum, recently provided the following projections -- for library serials budgets -- at the $1500 rate: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2534.html University articles publ. cost at $1500 serials budget Cornell 4848 $7.3 million $5.6 million Dartmouth 1492 $2.2 million $3.2 million Princeton 3132 $4.7 million $4.7 million Yale 4463 $6.7 million $6.4 million He concluded: "Thus, it would seem that the costs of the new scheme for ARL institutions are about the same as the present... It is presumably the hope of those of us engaged in the various aspects of the movement for alternatives to conventional journals to reduce costs, not merely redistribute them. Thus it would seem that the proposal under discussion has either grossly overestimated the expense of its scheme, or is too expensive to be worth considering." Now here is what it would cost and how much it would save if universities paid only the annual peer-review costs for their own outgoing (self-archived) research ($500, as in JMIR), instead of the annual toll- access fees to buy in other universities outgoing research: ---------- annual current annual $500 per article annual UNIVERSITY article incoming serials peer review percentage ---------- output toll-budget only savings Cornell 4848 $5.6 million $2.43 million 57% Dartmouth 1492 $3.2 million $0.75 million 77% Princeton 3132 $4.7 million $1.57 million 66% Yale 4463 $6.4 million $2.23 million 64% Throw in $10 per paper annual archiving costs and allow +/-50% for error and it still looks as if open access would bring all its other benefits (in terms of impact and access) at considerably less cost. So, as you see, JMIR is advantaged rather than disadvantaged by its lower cost. But see also the discussion-thread in the American Scientist Forum about why it is that PLoS may have had to levy a higher charge (they are competing for the very highest quality niche in the journal hierarchy, so as to produce a domino effect). But this higher charge serves rather to handicap PLoS somewhat than to disadvantage the less expensive open-access journals. Competing interests: None declared |
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Gunther Eysenbach, University of Toronto Toronto, M5G2C4, Canada
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Stevan Harnad correctly points out that journals having a lower article processing fee (APF) than PLoS (such as the J Med Internet Res) will be advantaged (in fact, that’s why I wrote “it is good that the PloS fee is so high - otherwise smaller Open Access journals such as ours that need to charge a fee would be in trouble”). One of my points was more that the big players BMC and PLoS will in the future be able to dictate the prices and conditions – the J Med Internet Res had for example little choice in equaling the APF to the BMC fee. If BMC or PLoS reduce their price, smaller Open Access journals will have to follow, otherwise authors will submit their work to BMC and PLoS. One of the problems is that BMC and PLoS cover the entire scope of life sciences, which may discourage the creation of further specialty Open Access journals. Due to their amount of venture capital / funding available BMC and PLoS can make publishing very efficient and reduce the actual per-article processing costs to a minimum. My concern is that in the long run it will be very difficult for smaller Open Access journals to compete against such powerful players. In a sense the competition among OA journals is more fierce than among traditional journals: Traditional journals compete for subscribers, and typically a subscriber (such as a library) can subscribe to more than one journal, while Open Access journals compete for papers, which can be submitted only to one journal. Of course the APF will not be the only criterion on which authors base their decision on where to submit their work. Other criteria include the reputation of the journal and efficiency of the peer-review and editorial processes – again bith with possible advantages for very large Open Access journals with lots of visibility and funding. So one future scenario is that we will have only a handful of Open Access publishers, who cover the entire spectrum of life sciences, as the presence of BMC and PLoS might discourage the creation of new OA journals not affiliated with BMC and PLoS. While such an oligopoly can have many advantages (common interface for users, and possibly an overall reduction in costs), I am more in favor of a decentralized / distributed system, along the lines of having multiple smaller players and a common (Open Archive) standard to link them. We’ll see what the future brings, but my feeling is that the recent move of PLoS towards creating two mega-journals covering all life sciences may hamper rather than stimulate the creation of more Open Archive journals elsewhere. As said above, it would have been more helpful to use part of the 9 Mio $ to perhaps create an OA journal with a narrow scope and to use the rest for supporting other journals not run by PLoS. Competing interests: I am an (unpaid) editor and publisher of a smaller Open Access journal. |
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Jan Velterop, Publisher London W1T 4LB
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Gunther Eysenbach draws our attention to some interesting points. He seems to fear the establishment of new monopolies, which would just replace the old ones we all try to get rid of. The chances of monopolies emerging in input-paid open access publishing are extremely remote, though. The reason is that in this new, open access input-paid model of financing and organising scientific publishing, the party that pays is the party that makes the choice, the opposite of what happens in the traditional model. Conventionally, the reader pays (vicariously the institutional library). But the reader (library) has little choice. Because any scientific research article is only published once, he can’t just take Science and not Nature because the former may be cheaper than the latter. If he needs one, he’s more than likely to need the other, too, because they both publish different articles. And so down the entire pyramid of science journals. And he has to pay for all the ones he needs. And publishers can charge pretty much what they want in the knowledge that there is no real competition. The author, however, has far more choice. At virtually every level in every discipline there are more than one journal in which his work can be published, often considerably more. Even at the top of the life sciences there are at least four: Journal of Biology, Cell, Science, and Nature. If the author pays (vicariously his institution), he pays only once and the level of article processing charges is one of the criteria he may consider in making the choice of where to publish. Where’s the chance of a monopoly emerging in this model? Since article charges will be seen in relation to value and since the barriers to entry for new open access, input-paid journals are dramatically lower than they ever were in the conventional publishing model, Eysenbachs concern that small independent journals may be squeezed out on price is not very realistic. Surely price is only one of the criteria and will be seen in relation to the value delivered for that price, such as visibility, general quality level of articles published in the journal, level of service from the publisher, et cetera. In the traditional publishing model it’s very difficult to discern a relationship between price and value. But it depends on what he sees as ‘independent’. If he means editorial independence, there should be no problem. If he means independence in the sense that small journals should not even share technology, infrastructure, organisational structure and the like, but develop and maintain that all by themselves, he is sub-optimising and that will lead to higher costs and therefore higher charges. Surely that would go against the general desire to lower the cost of publishing. I would like to stretch out a hand to those who have, or who want to establish, an independent open access journal. We have, at BioMed Central, the technology and systems that we are happy to share and no up-front investment would be needed. Editorial independence is guaranteed. The systems would be paid for from the article processing charges, so there is no financial risk to the editors should the paper-flow be disappointing or slow to come off the ground. An example of such an independent journal is the Malaria Journal (www.malariajournal.com). Its editorial policies can be found here: http://www.malariajournal.com/info/about/ . Jan Velterop
Competing interests: Jan Velterop is Publisher of the BioMed Central Group, which publishes ca 90 open access journals. |
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Gunther Eysenbach, Associate Professor University of Toronto, M5G2C4
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Journals hosted at BioMed Central (BMC) may have editorial independence, but there is no way downplaying the role of BMC - moving a journal to BMC is much more than "sharing the technology". BMC actually owns the journals: "BioMed Central is the sole publisher and owner of the journal". (http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/startajournal). BMC may have the best intentions, but with BMC being the owner of >90% of the current Open Access journals it is a monopoly. Competing interests: I am the editor of an independent Open Access journal (www.jmir.org). I am also editorial board member of two BioMed Central journals. |
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Fintan Steele, Editorial Director, Eaton Publishing Informa Life Sciences, Westborough, MA 01581
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A crucial difference between the BMC model and the PLoS model is the capture and use of subscriber data for additional purposes and the subsequent uses ("repackaging", "repurposing", "advertising", etc.) of BMC -published scientific material. The fact is that BMC is part of a for- profit company (like Eaton Publishing, where I work, and which also gives free access to the content of BioTechniques and, next month, PRECLINICA). Indeed, it strikes me that the major difference between the BMC and PLoS approaches is that PLoS values the scientific content SOLELY IN ITS OWN RIGHT, where BMC (and its parent company) also values the content in terms of how it can be used to leverage or make additional products/income. I have no objection to that if it results in open access to scientific information, but I think that this fact should be on the table in this discussion for the sake of making a fairer comparison between PLoS and BMC. Competing interests: Editorial Director of Eaton Publishing, Editor in Chief of the new journal PRECLINICA |
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Christian Schmidt, PostDoctoral Fellow at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center 1515 Holcombe Boulevard, 77030 Houston, Texas, USA
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I do not think there will be any monopoly in open-access publishing. BioMed Central (BMC) may own >90% of the current open access journals. Indeed, it looks like a monopoly. Imagine that Elsevier Science and other publishing houses are free changing to open-access publishing. What would happen to BMC and other publisher? Against that background, the current debate is nothing else than a storm in a teacup. Christian Schmidt Competing interests: I am (unpaid) editor of the BMC journal Molecular Cancer http:www.molecular-cancer.com . |
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Panayotis T. Tassios, Lecturer, University of Athens Medical School, M. Asias 75, 115 27 Athens, Greece
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"Open access" is ideologically and educationally wonderful - but how "open" is submission of articles to such journals going to be? Which institution is prepared to fork out 1460 EUR per article? It might be interesting to see a survey on what percentage of different researchers' annual research budget (or salary!) 1460 EUR represent... Competing interests: None declared |
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Joyce E Kent, Research Fellow (3 weeks left on contract) Edinburgh University, EH9 1QH
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I agree that freely available scientific papers should definitely still be peer reviewed. However, asking authors to pay for publication of their work could be contrary to the publication of scientific papers. If the funding bodies are to be the source of money then not only will people applying for grants need to know the results of their research, the exact experiments to be run but they will also need to guess at how many papers they will be writing prior to grant application. Nowadays, there appears to be no room for individual flair or following up of exciting results in science. With most research probably conducted by people on short term contracts, much of the writing of papers probably occurs outwith the timing of the original contract - who then pays for publication of such papers, particularly if multiple authors from different institutions are involved? If unanticipated results from research occur who pays for publication of such results, the author who may no longer be employed, the Universities etc who say they have no money or the original funders of the research who have not previously allocated that money to the project or does the research just not get published? No wonder youngsters of today do not wish to go into science - I do not blame them for making a good decision. If I was at the start rather then nearing the premature end of my career I would not have taken up science. At least during my early research career I had a title for my research project and then had the luxury of deciding with my supervisor how to tackle the problem. A luxury not afforded to many up and coming scientists of today. Competing interests: None declared |
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