Pay It Forward: Investigating a Sustainable Model of Open Access Article Processing Charges for Large North American Research Institutions Ivy Anderson California Digital Library [email protected] CNI 2015 Spring Meeting Seattle, WA What is the Pay It Forward project? A grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to investigate the impact on North American research-intensive universities of a largescale conversion to gold Open Access funded via Article Publication Charges (APCs) 18-month project, January 2015 June 2016
Pay It Forward will attempt to answer a single question: Can a large-scale conversion to open access scholarly journal publishing funded via APCs be viable and financially sustainable for large North American research-intensive institutions? Viable = author willingness to publish OA under the right conditions, and a scholarly publishing infrastructure that will allow high quality research and scholarship to flourish Sustainable = costing no more than, and ideally considerably less than, current subscription costs for comparable content today, with a rate of growth that is supportable over time Why this project, why now? Increasing disconnect between European and North American approaches to open access North America (Green) Tri-Agency Open Access
Policy NIH Open Access Policy OSTP Directive Faculty OA Policies FASTR Europe / UK (Gold) Finch Report Horizon 20/20 APC Total Cost of Ownership Agreements (UK, Austria, Netherlands) Why this project, why now? Increasing disconnect between European and North American approaches to open access North America (Green)
Europe / UK (Gold) Confusing economic situation Institutional license fees and APC revenue are both increasing Potential for publisher double-dipping Lack of transparency Confusion about What content one has access to What content one is paying for Local drivers: UC Faculty Open Access Policy Campus Open Access Fund Pilots
Faculty began asking: Does this mean I have to pay to publish? and Will the library pay? Our Libraries wanted to understand how gold OA would impact our budgets if we were to subsidize publication In 2013, CDL did some preliminary modeling of APC costs and possible scenarios at the request of our University Librarians UC 2010 publishing breakdown, by publisher Data from Web of Science or publisher reports UC costs per publisher under different APC scenarios compared to licensing costs
Formula: APC * % Grant funded * No. of 2010 UC articles per publisher APC % Grant funded Publisher A Publisher B Publisher C Publisher D Publisher E Publisher F Publisher G Publisher H Publisher I TOTALS Legend: $3,000 0%
$3,000 50% $2,000 50% > 15% Above License Fee < 15% Above License Fee $1,500 0% $1,500 25% $1,500 50%
>15% Below License Fee < 15% Below License Fee (Based on 2010 publishing output and 2011 licensing costs) $1,000 0% $1,000 25% $1,000 50% UC Publishing breakdown, by discipline (Disciplinary breakdown is an estimate based on
2012 UC Acountability Report graphs) Modeling gold OA by discipline Current Licensing Impact of Different APC and Grant Funding Scenarios, By Discipline Costs APC $1,500 $2,500 $1,000 $500 % Grant funded
50% 75% 25% 0% Life and Health Sciences $9,376,466 $14,931,540 $12,442,950 Physical Sciences
$11,363,274 Social Sciences and Humanities $4,502,907 All Disciplines $25,242,647 $8,018,790 $3,133,780 $26,084,110 Factoring in corresponding authorship Co-authorship patterns may make gold
OA more sustainable Pay It Forward will attempt to answer a single question: Can a large-scale conversion to open access scholarly journal publishing funded via APCs be viable and financially sustainable for large North American research-intensive institutions? Viable = author willingness to publish OA under the right conditions, and a scholarly publishing infrastructure that will allow high quality research and scholarship to flourish Sustainable = costing no more than, and ideally considerably less than, current subscription costs for comparable content today, with a rate of growth that is supportable over time Project Components: Qualitative and Quantitative Qualitative
Users: the value of different publishing components to academic authors and editors Faculty and student focus groups / surveys Publishers: Publisher survey on open access perspectives and plans Quantitative Reasonable publishing financial models that cover basic costs and ongoing innovation Analyze the cost of publishing - both traditional and non-traditional publisher use cases Current and potential costs to the partner universities under a variety of scenarios Five-Year period of study, 2009 - 2013 What our partner universities spent on scholarly journals from 2009-2013 Co-Led by UC Davis and CDL
Core Project Team MacKenzie Smith, UC Davis (Co-PI) Laine Farley, CDL (Co-PI) Greg Tananbaum, ScholarNext (Project Manager) Ivy Anderson, CDL (Quantitative Lead) Project Partners Four research-intensive universities Harvard, Ohio State, University of British Columbia, University of California (10 campuses)
Three industry partners Bibliometric: Scopus, Web of Science Publishing: Association of Learned Society and Professional Publishers (ALPSP) Project Consultants Greg Tananbaum, ScholarNext Project manager, Publisher surveys and costs Carol Tenopir, University of Tennessee User studies David Solomon, Michigan State University Bo-Christer Bjork, Hanken School of Economics APC research, Scenario modeling
Mark McCabe, Boston University & University of Michigan Scenario modeling, economic analysis Project Timeline Phase 1: January-March Phase 2: April-June Finalize data specifications, begin Phase 3: July-December Collect and refine data gathering Phase 4: data Conduct focus groups Complete survey January-June Conduct user surveys
Develop publisher survey Conduct publisher survey Perform publishing cost analysis analysis Complete financial and bibliometric data analysis Build and refine models Review and refine model Prepare
documentation Write up findings Deliverable The main outcome of the project will be a detailed, flexible, and publicly accessible financial model that depicts what the emerging APC model would cost large research institutions under a variety of rigorously-modeled scenarios What level of APC is realistic and sustainable in a given discipline? How might costs be distributed among institutions, research funders, and other players? Our goal is to develop a replicable methodology that that others can apply in a local context Work to Date: Focus groups 8 focus groups conducted so far: 60 participants
4 locations: UBC, Harvard, UC Irvine, UC Davis OSU to come in April Diversity of disciplines, ages, and perspectives Transcription has begun, with analysis and questionnaire drafts to follow Early focus group impressions Range of perspectives: True believers, skeptics, most people somewhere in the middle Many senior faculty already post green versions in a repository or personal website Support for OA as readers and as a moral good, but most have access to what they need now
Concerns Where funding will come from Richer nations may dominate publication Potential for APC price increases Predatory / vanity publishing Lack of transparency publishing is broken APCs are too high publishers charge what the market will bear Library role
Coordinating/administrative Institutional publishing licenses Looking toward the future: Global Outlook Global R&D Share S&E Global Article Share 2015 STM Report NSF 2014 2014 STM Revenue Share ROW Asia-Pacific
EMEA US US 55% EMEA 28% US 14% Europe Asia Asia-Pacific
ROW 37% 26% 25% 4% STM 2015 Report 34% 30% 22% The cumulative effect of sustained above-global-average growth in R&D spending in emerging economies has been a profound shift in the global make-up of research. (STM Report, 2015)
