The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly journals

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SUMMARY: Talat Chaudhri and I agree that Green OA via self-archiving is feasible and desirable, and that publication will eventually consist of peer review alone. The only points of disagreement are about how to get there from here. I advocate Green OA mandates, whereas Talat advocates direct transition to peer-review-only, administered by university consortia. What Talat does not explain, however, is how we are to get the 25,000 journal titles that are currently being published by their current publishers to migrate to (or be replaced by) such consortia. Nor does Talat explain how the consortia's true peer-review expenses would be paid for, even if the 25K journals titles did miraculously migrate to such consortia of their own accord (although the answer even then is obvious: via Gold OA author-institution fees, paid out of their subscription cancellation savings).

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Talat Chaudhri, Repository Advisor, Aberystwyth University, wrote (in the American Scientist Open Access Forum):

TC: "Gold OA [1] isn't popular and, I suspect, [2] never will be."

Talat Chaudhri is right about the first point [1], and the reason is partly the current price of Gold OA and partly the fact that Gold OA is not yet necessary, because Green OA (self-archiving) can provide OA.

But whether the price of Gold OA once it amounts to nothing more than the cost of peer review will be "popular" [2] -- if and when it becomes a necessity (i.e., if and when universal Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable) -- is not a matter of either popularity or suspicion: As long as peer review is necessary, paying the true costs of implementing it will be necessary, if one wants to publish (peer-reviewed research) at all.

The good news is that the cost per paper of peer review alone then will be far less than the cost per paper of (subscription) publishing now, and the subscription cancellations will release many times the amount of money needed to pay for peer review alone.

For the perplexed reader: Talat and I are not disagreeing on most of these points. We both agree that Green OA via self-archiving is feasible and desirable, and that publication will eventually consist of peer review alone.

The only points of disagreement are about how to get there from here.

I advocate Green OA mandates, whereas Talat advocates direct transition to peer-review-only, administered by university consortia.

What Talat does not explain, however, is how we are to get the 25,000 journal titles that are currently being published by their current publishers to migrate to (or be replaced by) such consortia.

Nor does Talat explain how the consortia's true peer-review expenses would be paid for, even if the 25K journals titles did, mirabile dictu, migrate to such consortia of their own accord (although the answer even then is obvious: via Gold OA author-institution fees, paid out of their subscription cancellation savings).

But apart from not wanting to call this sort of payment "Gold OA" (even though that's exactly what it is!), Talat also does not like Green OA mandates.

The trouble is that Talat has no better way -- nor even an equally good alternative way -- to get the 2.5 million articles published annually in the 2.5K journals to "migrate" to their authors' Green OA IRs -- any more than he has a way of getting the university peer review consortia created, or of getting the journal titles to migrate over to (or be replaced by) them.

So let's focus on the substantive points of agreement: (1) Universal Green OA and (2) publishing costs reduced to just peer review alone. Talat can leave the problem of generating that Green OA to the Green OA mandates, and he can call the funding of the peer review something other than "Gold OA" if he likes -- it all comes to the same thing anyway...

TC: "On "downsizing" to Gold OA, I'm afraid that I agree with the original point in the [Letter to Nature] to which N. Miradon posted a link recently. The developing world doesn't want it."

Reply: Downsizing is for publishers (not researchers) to do, under Green OA cancellation pressure. The only thing the developing world need do is to provide Green OA to its own article output by self-archiving the accepted, refereed final drafts (postprints) in their Institutional Repositories (IRs) (which is exactly the same thing that the developed world needs to do).

TC: "Neither, I submit, does anybody in the developed world want to pay for it."

They needn't. They need only mandate and provide Green OA. The rest will take care of itself. Institutions are already paying for publication (via subscriptions). When they no longer have to pay for subscriptions by the incoming journal, institutions' savings will be more than enough to pay for peer review by the outgoing article instead.

TC: "In terms of diverting currently subscription funds progressively to OA, any librarian such as myself will tell you that getting management agreement for what looks to them like a hypothetical new publishing model is going to be complex and very possibly unworkable, leaving only the few universities that have created funds for the purpose. None to my knowledge has agreed to allocate money on a yearly basis, as the costs are currently unknown."

But I have not said anything whatsoever about libraries needing to progressively divert subscription funds to OA.

I said universities and funders should mandate and provide OA (as 44 universities and funders, including Southampton and Harvard, ERC and NIH have done) and that IF and WHEN that should ever make subscriptions unsustainable (i.e., they are all cancelled), THEN a small portion of their windfall institutional savings can and will be redirected to pay for peer review.

No one is asking libraries to divert anything anywhere now, instantaneously or progressively. (If and when the time of universal, unsustainable cancellations comes, Necessity will be the Mother of Invention. No need to speculate or counterspeculate about it in our imaginations now, pre-emptively; let's just concentrate on mandating and providing universal Green OA.)

TC: "Why will Gold OA not catch on? Because it is unjust! Only those academics whose institutions can afford to pay will be able to publish, unlike the present situation where anybody can."

You are talking about Gold OA now, Talat, at current asking prices, and I agree.

So focus instead on mandating and providing Green OA for now, and worry about the question of converting to Gold OA if and when it becomes an actual matter of necessity, not just a hypothetical matter of possibility. (By that time the asking price will be so low, and the cancellation savings so high, that the decision will become a no-brainer.)

TC: "As I am presently a librarian, not an academic, I would be very likely unable to publish in my field of research on the basis of these centrally allocated funds, like retired academics and those in the developing world. Nobody will want this model, quite simply. They don't want it now!"

To repeat, you are thinking of Gold OA today, at today's asking prices, while all the money that can potentially pay for it is still tied up in paying the subscriptions. This is unilluminating and irrelevant: Forget about Gold OA if you wish. Publish wherever you like, self-archive your postprint, and let nature take care of the rest,

(Once Green OA is universal and only peer review needs to be paid for, the cost will be low enough so these needless hypothetical worries will look risible. And provisions for the minority of researchers who are retired, institutionally affiliated or otherwise unable to pay the low costs of peer review will be made. We don't need to retain the present access-denial juggernaut in order to take care of that small minority of special cases.)

TC: "[T]here was no "plausible path" for print to electronic publishing, yet it happened. If people as well placed as yourself were advocating... [university peer-review consortia] I am sure it might have a strong chance of catching on."

(1) If I were anywhere near as "well placed" as you imagine I am, dear Talat, we would have had 100% Green OA a decade and a half ago.

(2) Electronic publishing did not face the regenerating heads of the 34-headed monster responsible for the "Zeno's Paralysis" that besets Green OA -- a syndrome to which you, Talat, are alas not immune either:

#1. Preservation
#7. Peer review
#9. Downsizing
#10. Copyright
#17. Publishers
#18. Libraries
#30. Redirecting Cancellation Savings
#32. Poisoned Apple

The only effective medication, apparently, is Green OA mandates, and, luckily, relief is on the way:

Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Chandos.

TC: "...'relieving' journals of costs also "relieves" them of profits, which they won't want. It's myopic, to use your word, to suggest that this won't cause problems fairly soon."

Fairly soon? Self-archiving at 100% levels in high energy physics has not yet begun to be felt in cancellations in 17 years (both APS and IOP have confirmed this publicly: see the publications of Alma Swan). I am optimistic about mandates, but not so optimistic that I think that 100% Green OA will be with us "fairly soon." So how can a library cancel a journal while only an unknown percentage of articles from an unknown number of mandating universities are being self-archived?

I can only repeat: It would do a lot more good if we self-archived (and supported self-archiving mandates) more and speculated about the future of publishing (or libraries) less...

TC: "[Publishers currently endorse OA self-archiving] under licence which they remain free to withdraw, if that should be in their interests. Don't fool yourself that they couldn't if need be. At present it doesn't serve publishers to do so, so they don't. This is no basis on which to plan."

I cannot fathom, Talat, why you would prefer to keep speculating about whether and when publishers might withdraw their Green light to self-archive instead of pressing on with self-archiving and self-archiving mandates while the going is Green. This is one of the 34 familiar symptoms of Zeno's Paralysis, and it's been with us for years now:

#32. Poisoned Apple
I worry about self-archiving even if the journal gives me the green light to do so, because if I do, the light may change to red."

The answer to your question is that as Green OA grows, the risk to publishers is less that of losing subscribers, but that of losing authors. And losing authors would certainly accelerate cancellations a lot faster than the anarchic growth of Green OA self-archiving will. (Losing Harvard authors today would be bad enough, but it would only get worse, if the publishers' response to OA mandates were to try to revert to Gray instead of Green.)

The only thing you need to "plan" today is how to facilitate the provision of Green OA.

TC: "I happen to believe that nobody wants Gold OA in the future, as they don't appear to want it now."

Most researchers don't want Gold OA now because the money to pay for it is tied up in subscriptions and the asking price is way too high. What they want now is OA, and Green OA mandates will see to it that they get (and give) it.

If and when the subscription funds are released, the price drops, and there is no other way to publish, researchers will want Gold OA.

But why keep speculating about if and when? Green OA is within reach, and all it needs is more and more Green OA mandates.

TC: "Arts departments have not co-operated with the Green OA revolution, as has recently been brought home to me here by our English Department."

No? It seems to me that the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science voted unanimously for Harvard's Green OA mandate. All the other universities that have mandates have English Departments too.

TC: "This is because we haven't understood their needs and continue to talk only about the most recent cutting edge science departments. Arts subjects are much more concerned with what you dismiss as "legacy" literature, preservation, book publishing, without which OA means little to them. We have sought no answers for any of these areas and so have no solutions for these academics."

OA's primary targets are journal articles; Green OA mandates only mandate the self-archiving of journal articles. The Arts and Humanities disciplines are more book-intensive than journal-intensive compared to the Physical, Biological and Social Sciences. But inasmuch as they publish in journals at all, no discipline is indifferent to the usage and impact of its journal articles. So:

(1) Preservation is important (but no more relevant to OA than non-OA).

(2) Book-publishing, inasmuch as it is not an author give-away literature, the way refereed journal articles are, is (so far) irrelevant.

(3) The legacy literature will have its turn once the current and forward-going literature is OA. (World hunger, the cure of all diseases and the righting of all wrongs and injustice will have to wait too, I am afraid: We're just talking about righting one wrong here: needless and obsolete access-denial for refereed research journal articles in the online age.)

TC: "...repository managers, their libraries and therefore their institutions... may not be so eager to follow your predictions as you hope, given that you have such a poor view of their "legacy" holdings and given the comments I have made on the failure to address the needs of all disciplines. I'm not sure we even have a solution for sciences and social sciences."

OA IRs are not preservation archives, they are access-provision archives. And the access is to their own institutional research output, not to the licensed subscription content their libraries have bought in from other institutions. (There is some fundamental underlying confusion here, or a conflation of two agendas, only one of which is OA. And none of this has anything to do with discipline differences.To my knowledge, no significant discipline differences have been reported across all the disciplines tested, either for the size of the OA impact advantage, or for the willingness to comply with OA mandates.)

TC: "as I have agreed, we are stuck with the necessity for mandates asap. [But] publishers and universities alike need to find different funding models now, ahead of time, before conflict arises with the publishers, as it must inevitably do if we simply eyeball them from the trenches waving our mandates."

I'm glad we agree on the necessity of mandates, Talat (although only one of us regrets that we are "stuck" with them).

But we will have to agree to disagree on the advance need to find different funding models. Or rather, I would say we have found already a different funding model (Gold: author-institutions pays for publication output instead of user-institution paying for publication input), but its time has not yet come: Universally mandated OA is needed first, to pave the way.

TC: "The relationship between library (i.e. those who acquire both resource and locus of deposit) and researcher is key to the solution, as any good subject librarian will tell you. I fear that you don't understand how libraries form a key part of the way in which the institutions who they serve, and who you mention as players in this, actually change policy in the interests of the researchers. This is the main point of contact in the institution."

Talat, is the role of libraries and librarians in the transition to free online access to research journal articles really that apparent? Did good subject librarians know where we're all heading a-priori, even before the online era?

OA is largely a matter for the research community: They are the providers as well as the users. But unlike with books, which need to be bought in and collected by their libraries, it is not at all obvious that OA requires library mediation.

It is fine if the library is made the manager of the IR, but then let the task be taken on as the radically new task it really is, rather than forced into the Procrustean Bed of what the library's traditional expertise and functions have been. OA is new territory, requiring new, Open mind-sets, not "what any good subject librarian already knows"...

TC: "I would instead hope to hear direct answers to the points raised, as well as a reasoned argument against "consortia" journals rather than merely waving them aside as a foolish repository manager's fancy."

You've had direct answers, Talat: Self-archiving mandates have already been tested and demonstrated to generate Green OA, they are feasible, they are growing, and they scale (to all universities and all funders).

What has been tested and demonstrated with (1) generating peer-review consortia and (2) getting journal titles and authors to migrate to them?

It does not help to repeat an N of 1 (the Board of Celtic Studies). There are over 3000 Gold OA journals, and you yourself doubt they will scale...

TC: "Sadly it appears this point has been side-stepped deliberately, as I confess that I anticipated. Core Green OA forecasts, however speculative, are to be supported. Others are to be rejected as mere speculations, a double standard."

No double standard. I have left no substantive point unanswered.

TC: "from the academics' expressed point of view... [self-archiving] is a new obligation that impinges on, as they see it, what they do with their copyright. Hence it looks like coercion. Taking heed of this reaction is the only way to get true co-operation."

Arthur's Sale's studies (and the continuing evidence since) keep confirming that authors willingly comply with self-archiving mandates. The latest two mandates (from Harvard) have been unanimously voted in by the academics themselves.

TC: "I'm not in a position to [university peer-review consortia]. But I suggest that someone whose advocacy on the subject will be heard, such as yourself, might be in a position to popularise the idea speedily, if you wished to put your efforts into it."

I did put my efforts behind alternative publishing models, a decade and a half ago, when I thought the problem was in the publishing model. Crashing failure made me realize that the problem was not in the publishing model but in academics' heads (Zeno's Paralysis). And the tried and tested cure is Green OA mandates, and they are happening. So why should we go back to old, far-fetched, and discarded hypotheses?

TC: "Simply, what we don't have is an answer to how peer review, copy editing and so forth will actually be provided after the Green OA revolution."

What we need now is not an answer to that question! What we need now is universal Green OA!

TC: "If there is no way forward, the revolution cannot happen."

There is a way forward: Green OA self-archiving mandates, by universities and funders, and they are happening.

TC: "I support Green OA but I do not believe at all that it will, or should, lead to Gold OA."

Fine. Let it just lead to Green OA!

TC: "There is no natural progression in this whatsoever, as nobody wants Gold OA anyway."

Fine. It is OA that research needs, not necessarily Gold OA.

TC: "If you destroy the publishers, as you suggest, who will then do the peer review?"

Where did I ever suggest "destroying the publishers"? (The talk of impending destruction, catastrophe and doom has come from speculators (and mostly by those with vested interests in the status quo, such as publishers, but sometimes also, for different reasons, librarians).

And peer review will continue to be done (for free) by the peers who review, regardless of who is paying to implement the process, or how.

TC: "All this talk about costs is a whitewash: they are relatively insignificant anyway compared to the research process. Universities could easily shoulder them, especially given savings from subscriptions, which are exorbitant."

You sound like you are saying the same thing I am now. So why are we talking about costs, and who will pay them, and when, when the urgent issue is Green OA, and getting it mandated so that we have it, at long last, now?

TC: "Find a solution to the future source of peer review (that isn't merely Gold OA) and you solve the whole thing. This peer review problem is all that is holding back Green OA. Forget Gold OA, it simply isn't part of the solution."

No, it is Zeno's Paralysis that is holding back Green OA, and one of the symptoms of Zeno's Paralysis is fretting needlessly about who is going to pay for peer review if and when it is no longer being paid by subscriptions.

But the OA problem is not "who is going to pay for peer review if and when it is no longer being paid by subscriptions." It is the research access and impact that continues to be lost daily, as we sit counterfactually speculating, day in and day out, about the future of publishing instead of the present of research.

And the solution is at researcher' fingertips: They just need to do the keystrokes that will get their articles into their Green OA IRs.

And the cure for what is holding back researchers' fingers is Green OA mandates.

You have created an IR, Talat, but we know that's not enough. You now have to help fill it, and your scepticism about university mandates and preference for conjectures about university peer-review consortia certainly is not helping to fill it.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum