Open Access Archivangelism

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SUMMARY: Open Access (OA) means free online access to peer-reviewed journal articles. There are two ways to provide OA: (1) by publishing an article in an OA journal that makes all articles free online ("Gold OA") or by (2) publishing in a non-OA journal and self-archiving it to make it OA ("Green OA").
    R. Gadagkar (Letter to Nature, 22 May 2008) suggests that although denying access to users because of unaffordable subscription fees to the user-institution is bad, denying publishing to authors because of unaffordable OA publishing fees to the author-institution is worse, especially in the Developing World.  
    The usual reply is that (1) many Gold OA journals do not charge a publishing fee and (2) exceptions are made for authors who cannot pay. More important, there is also Green OA self-archiving, and the self-archiving mandates increasingly being adopted by universities (e.g. Harvard) and research funders (e.g. NIH).
    Self-archiving costs nothing, and if it ever makes subscriptions unsustainable it will at the same time generate the windfall institutional savings out of which to pay for OA publishing instead.
    Nor are the costs of publishing likely to remain the same under self-archiving: If journal subscriptions are ever no longer in demand (because users all use authors’ self-archived drafts rather than publishers’ subscription-based version) journals will not convert to OA publishing under its current terms (where journals still provide most of the products and services of conventional journal publishing), but under substantially scaled-down terms.
    Current costs of providing the print and PDF edition, of access-provision and of archiving will all vanish (for the publisher). Those functions will have been off-loaded onto the distributed network of OA institutional repositories, each hosting its own peer-reviewed, published output. The only service that peer-reviewed journal publishers will still need to provide then will be peer review itself – and the windfall institutional cancellation savings will be more than enough to pay for that.
    But until then, Green OA is OA enough -- and free.

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In a letter to Nature 453, 450 (22 May 2008) Raghavendra Gadagkar, Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, writes:

"The traditional 'publish for free and pay to read' business model adopted by publishers of academic journals can lead to disparity in access to scholarly literature, exacerbated by rising journal costs and shrinking library budgets. However, although the 'pay to publish and read for free' business model of open-access publishing has helped to create a level playing field for readers, it does more harm than good in the developing world..."

It is easy to guess what else this (closed access) letter says: That at the prices currently charged by those Gold OA publishers that charge for Gold OA publishing today, it is unaffordable to most researchers as well as to their institutions and funders in India and elsewhere in the Developing World.

This is a valid concern, even in view of the usual reply (which is that (1) many Gold OA journals do not charge a fee, and that (2) exceptions are made by those journals that do charge a fee, for those authors who cannot afford to pay it). The concern is that current Gold OA fees would not scale up equitably if they became universal, making publishing impossible for some.

However, the overall concern is misplaced. The reasoning is that whereas access-denial to users today because of unaffordable subscription fees to the user-institution is bad, publication-denial to authors because of unaffordable Gold OA publishing fees to the author-institution would be worse.

But this leaves out Green OA self-archiving of published research, and the Green OA mandates to self-archive that are now being adopted by universities (such as Harvard) and research funders (such as NIH) in growing numbers (now 44 worldwide, and many more under way).

Not only does Green OA cost next to nothing to provide, but once it becomes universal, if it ever does go on to generate universal subscription cancellations too, making the subscription model of publishing cost recovery unsustainable, then universal Green OA will also by the very same token generate the release of the annual windfall user-institution subscription cancellation savings out of which to pay the costs of publishing on the Gold OA (author-institution pays) cost-recovery model.

The natural question to ask next is: Will user-institution costs and author-institution costs will balance out, if universal Green OA leads to universal Gold OA? Or will those institutions that had used more research than they provided benefit while those institutions that had provided more research than they used will lose out?

This would be a reasonable question to ask (and has been asked before) -- except that it is a fundamental mistake to assume that the costs of publishing would remain the same under the conditions of universal Green OA.

It is far more realistic to expect that if and when journals (both their print editions and their online PDF editions) are no longer in demand -- because users are all instead using the authors' OA postprints, self-archived in their IRs, rather than the publisher's proprietary version -- that journals will convert to Gold OA not under the current terms of Gold OA (where journals still provide most of the products and services of conventional journal publishing, apart from the print edition), but under substantially scaled-down terms.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan, pp. 99-105.

In particular, all the current costs of providing both the print edition and the PDF edition, as well as all current costs of access-provision and archiving will vanish (for the publisher), because those functions have been off-loaded onto the distributed network of Green OA IRs, each hosting its own peer-reviewed, published postprint output. The only service that the peer-reviewed journal publisher will still need to provide is peer review itself.

That is why Richard Poynder's recent query (about the true cost of peer review alone) is a relevant one.

As I have said many times before, based on my own experience of editing a peer-reviewed journal for a quarter century, as well as the estimates that can be made from the costs of Gold OA journals that provide only peer review and nothing else today, the costs per paper of peer review alone will be so much lower than the costs per paper of conventional journal publishing today, or even the costs per paper of most Gold OA publishing today, that the problem of the possibility of imbalance between net user-institution costs and net author-institution costs will vanish, just as the the subscription model vanished.

Alma Swan has forwarded the link to a JISC-funded study of such questions being conducted by John Houghton (Australia) and Charles Oppenheim (UK) (in the context of UK research, where there are, I assure you, author-institutions that are every bit as worried about current Gold OA publishing fees as Developing World institutions are) Alma also drew attention to a study just released by RIN.

Peter Suber has pointed to Fytton Rowland's 2002 estimates of the cost of peer review alone:

Rowland, F. (2002) The Peer Review Process. Learned Publishing, 15(4) 247-58.

Peter writes:

"Rowland does a literature survey to determine the costs of peer review (see Section 5). He concludes (Section 7) that it's about $200 per submitted paper, or $400 per published paper at a journal with a rejection rate of 50%.

"I'm not in a position to vouch for the results, but it's the only paper I've seen trying to answer this narrow question.

"Note that the paper came out in 2002 and doesn't reflect the latest generation of journal management software. This matters because steadily improving software (including open-source software) is steadily taking over the clerical chores of facilitating peer review, and thereby reducing its costs."

I would add that even at $400 per paper, that would make peer review alone cost only 10% of the average price of $4000 that Andrew Odlyzko estimated was being paid per article in 1997 (i.e., the total collective contribution summed across subscribing institutions) and less than a third of most Gold OA publishing fees per article today.

Odlyzko, A. (1997) The economics of Electronic Journals. First Monday 2(8)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum