Hybrid journal pricing (1): Impending Oxford Open price increases
You are satisfied that Oxford University Press takes the mixed revenue
model for their hybrid Oxford Open program seriously and reduces prices
for e-only site licenses for some of their journals in response to
increased Open Access uptake? Don't cheer too soon:
From Dec 2009, author publication charges for your scientists will
increase by 40% in GBP or EUR and 25% in USD, for all journals in the
Oxford Open program for which your library maintains a local online
subscription [13].
Oxford Open, the hybrid journal program of OUP, carefully designed as a
controlled experiment and case study [1-4], continues to evolve and
adjust its pricing model.
OUP promises to (and actually does) adjust the e-only price for its
hybrid journals in order to "reflect the amount of open access versus
non-open access content published within each journal" during the last
completed year when setting its annual prices, and this has resulted in
some Oxford Open journals experiencing a price reduction to the
online-only subscription, cf. the explanations and examples provided in
[5-11]. We have recently analysed the 2010 price list [15], and the 2010
OA % adjustment ranges from 0% up to 28% (2009: 0%... 24%), with 8
titles at 16% and above, 20 titles in the range 8%...15%, 33 titles in
the range 1...7% and 25 titles with no adjustment, median adjustment was
4% (2009: 2%), average (aggregate) adjustment 7% (2009: 5%), relative to
the 2010 online only price without adjustment which may be derived from
the print only and combined prices that are not adjusted. Actual price
decreases relative to 2009 range up to 14%, but there are also price
increases up to 33% and the median decrease is only 1% in GBP/EUR and 2%
in USD, the aggregate decrease 1.3% resp. 2.7%.
It may be instructive to compare prices for the journal with the largest
OA uptake, Bioinformatics. From 2005 to 2010, online only price changed
from GBP 1008 to GBP 976 or EUR 1512 to 1464 (-3%), and USD 1714 to 1951
(+14%, the company exchange rate used for USD/GBP was 1,7 in 2005, and
2.0 for 2010). In contrast, during the same years, combined subscription
rates for print plus online increased from GBP 1120 to 1626 or ca. EUR
1680 to 2439 (+45%), and from USD 1904 to 3252 (+71%).
There is one peculiar case, Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative
Medicine (eCAM), where OUP has abandoned the 2009 OA adjustment for the
online only version, thereby doubling its price for 2010. OUP claims
that INMPRC's 10 year sponsorship grant for eCAM (which helped to start
the journal in 2004) has ended which seems strange (requests by this
author to both the editor in chief and the managing editor to confirm
this remained unanswered). In 2007 eCAM moved from fully sponsored to a
subscription based model for non-research articles. For 2008 eCAM
announced a change in its OA policy: while all original research
articles would continue to be published open access (costs then
presumably still being covered by the sponsorship grant), "Reviews,
editorials, commentaries and all other articles excluding original
articles will be published as standard articles, available to
subscribers of the journal. However, the journal will participate in the
Oxford Open program, and authors may choose to pay the Oxford Open
charges in order to have their articles published as open access
articles." eCAM has ca. 55% original research and 45% other articles.
For the latter, access is subscription based, if authors do not opt in
to pay for OA. Apparently they do, because the journal is nearly 100% OA
(almost all articles carry a cc-by-nc license, and the two reviews (3%)
from 2008, that did not were still labelled with 'Free Full Text'). So
it is a mystery to us why OUP has abandoned the OA % adjustment: even if
original research articles were no longer sponsored through INMPRC, most
of the rest is being paid for by author charges. We do not know whether
any library actually pays for the online version - as this journal is
97% open access and 100% free access, there is no need to do so except
as a voluntary sponsorship.
Since its inception, in addition OUP has used an incentive to keep
libraries subscribing to these hybrid journals by offering a lower
author publication charge for corresponding authors based at
institutions with a full price online subscription to the journal. At
the same time this helped to make the Oxford Open option more attractive
to authors at those institutions and provided an incentive for authors
to try it out.
It has to be taken into account here that the majority of Oxford Open
journals are not excluded from collection deals for consortia. However,
reduced article processing fees apply only to fully paid subscriptions
not titles one might get via cross access or additional access with in
consortia collection deals.
From the Oxford Open FAQ [14],
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html
"Why is there a mixed model of funding under the Oxford Open model?"
"We have chosen this model in consultation with authors and librarians.
The ability of authors to pay publication charges is highly dependent on
sponsoring agencies and research institutions making the necessary
changes to their funding processes so that authors have the funds at
their disposal.
For this reason we believe that any transition to an author-funded open
access model will need to occur gradually. We hope that you will support
the Oxford Open initiative by maintaining your online subscriptions to
give your researchers who wish to publish in the journal in question the
option of paying reduced author charges, should they choose to have
their paper made freely available online. By doing this we hope to
establish an accessible charging initiative that will actively encourage
funding agencies to make further resources available for publication."
Nevertheless, with a mixed revenue model like this, if we assume that
the full Open Access Charge is in the order of that required to sustain
the journals if they were to move to full open access without
subscriptions [4], the reduced rates are bound to increase, as OA uptake
increases and subscription rates are adjusted downwards correspondingly.
I did not see this effect mentioned in the various articles outlining
the prospects for pricing within the Oxford Open program, but it now
becomes quite obvious.
The discount for authors from subscribing institutions has been reduced
twice in the 5 years since program start, i.e. from
47% in 2005-2007 : GBP 800 / USD 1500 / EUR 1200 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 2800
/ EUR 2250 to
40% in 2008-2009 : GBP 900 / USD 1800 / EUR 1350 vs. GBP 1500 / USD 3000
/ EUR 2250, and now to
25% in 2010- : GBP 1275 / USD 2250 / EUR 1900 vs. GBP 1700 / USD 3000 /
EUR 2550
So for 2010 OUP increases author publication charges for authors from
subscribing institutions drastically, by over 40% in GBP and EUR, and
25% in USD. In the 5 years since the inception of the program, APCs for
institutional subscribers have increased by 60% (USD 50%) which amounts
to an annual increase of 10% (USD 8,5%). If this were intended to shift
money from subscription fees to OA funding, and to limit any loss due to
a higher OA uptake, it would be clearly driven only by the needs of the
journals with the highest current OA uptake (near 30%). Given the
multiple other means of revenue increase used by OUP, it seems doubtful
whether such a large increase is really necessary, especially if it is
applied to all journals, even those with very low OA uptake.
Interestingly, for Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) Richardson [3] reported
a substantial reduction in cost per article from 2002 to 2005 (from GBP
2700 to ca. GBP 1750), attributed to economies of scale, together with
an "aggressive efficiency drive which has increased speed of publication
whilst reducing cost."
How many institutions and their authors will be affected by this price
increase? One would guess that a major part of submissions willing to
pay for open access to their paper would come from institutions that
also hold a subscription to the journal in question, also because the
full open access charge might seem prohibitive to many authors. For the
Oxford Open Journal with the highest OA uptake, Bioinformatics, this is
indeed the case. In 2006, 87% of authors choosing the Open access option
for Bioinformatics were eligible for the subscriber rates [11], and the
press release reporting the first full-year results from Oxford Open [5]
quoted a percentage of 80% overall. The converse could also be true:
given the bonus model above, any institution that is paying author
publication charges on behalf of its authors is better off, when it
holds also a subscription, mostly already with 1 pub/year, and certainly
with 2 or 3. Thus, library subscriptions may serve to support lower
publication charges for authors.
Full Author publication charges (for authors from institutions that do
not have a fully paid subscription) increase also, for the first time in
5 years, by 13% in GBP and EUR while remaining unchanged in USD - the
latter possibly reflects that the GBP has lost in value compared to the
USD; that it has also lost compared to the EUR is conveniently ignored
by OUP.
Similar, when OUP speaks of "exchange rate adjustments", these are
apparently made to offset the loss effects of currency devaluations for
the company, not to bring company rates in better accord with actual
exchange rates. E.g, for some US based titles we see in 2010 price
increases by 33% because OUP prefers to use a "company rate" of 1.0
USD/EUR instead of 1.33 (a result of switching from 2,0 USD/GBP to a
more current exchange rate of 1,5 while leaving the EUR/GBP conversion
rate unchanged at 1,5 GBP/EUR). On the other hand, OUP UK titles
continue to be sold in the USA at 2,0 USD/GBP and in Europe at 1,5
EUR/GBP, even though the pound has lost 20...25%.
Therefore, institutions from USA and Canada (charged in USD) and Europe
outside UK (charged in EUR) would have been far better off for 2010, had
OUP - instead of announcing a "price freeze" on e-only, had increased
prices normally but then also adjusted the company exchange rates
(20...25% downwards) as it did conversely in previous years when the GBP
was still getting stronger in relation to the USD (2005: 1,7, 2006: 1,8,
2007: 1.8, 2008: 1,95, 2009: 2,0, 2010: 2,0). (That the failure to do so
was not necessarily related to the "price freeze" only, is apparent from
the fact that OUP did neither take into account the loss of the GBP
against the EUR in setting 2009 prices, the conversion rate has been
kept at 1,5 since 2006). So this is a clear example of what we know as
"exchange rate profiteering" (raise the conversion rate as long as it
can be justified by an increasing exchange rate, but leave it unchanged
for years if the exchange rate falls back).
In this context it is interesting that we have here another publisher
believing that it is compatible with EU competition regulations to
charge markedly higher prices for non UK customers within the EU, using
artificial "company exchange rates" that are far from actual exchange
rates, while at the same hindering agencies to buy services at UK prices
for reselling to to non UK customers. A premise that in our opinion is
worth contesting.
In summary, it appears that OUP makes up for the 2010 "price freeze" on
e-only subscriptions by price increases of 10% on print and 14% on
combined subscriptions [12] plus price increases of 13% resp. 41% on
author charges for its Oxford Open program, plus avoiding the need to
adjust EUR and USD conversion rates to GBP by 20...25% downwards for
non-US titles. Not exactly helpful ...
In implementing a cautious transition strategy towards more OA and away
from Print OUP has certainly been successful so far. They are also one
of the few hybrid publishers who actually make adjustments to their
hybrid journals depending on OA uptake, and carefully document the
progress of their experiments in OA publishing. However, based on our
findings above, librarians and university administrators should clearly
not indulge in illusions about direct savings for their institutions;
and those who are going to save are institutions that do not publish in
a particular Oxford Open journal they subscribe to (or, paradoxically,
those who choose not to publish OA via the golden route, as long as they
at least self-archive). Article processing charges so far seem to spiral
up in the same way as subscription charges did in the past. We are in a
transition period, and it is still too early to make predictions.
Nevertheless, what we see here indicates that there is now more money on
the table for paying article processing charges in certain fields for
gold OA publishing in established journals and OUP must think that price
elasticity of demand for gold OA is low enough to allow adjustments such
as those described above (or perhaps this is just another facette of
their carefully designed longterm experiment with hybrid OA models).
Whether this will not throw back OA uptake for 2010 remains to be seen.
Bernd-Christoph Kaemper,
Stuttgart University Library
References:
[1] David Worlock, OUP: OA In The World Of Intelligent Experiment,
in: EPS Insights, February 24, 2006
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/eps%20insights%2024%20february%202006%20-%20oup.pdf
[2] Martin Ruchardson: Open access: evidence-based policy or
policy-based evidence?
The university press perspective, in: Serials 18(1), March 2005, 35-37,
DOI:10.1629/1835
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=1&spage=35
[3] Martin Richardson: Open access and institutional repositories: an
evidence-
based approach, in: Serials 18(2), July 2005, 98-103, DOI:10.1629/1898
http://uksg.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0953-0460&volume=18&issue=2&spage=98
[4] Claire Saxby: The Bioinformatics Open Access option, Editorial,
in: Bioinformatics, Vol. 21 no. 22, 2005, p. 4071-4072,
DOI:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti707
http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/long/21/22/4071
[5] Press release, 30 August 2006
Full year results from Oxford Open show wide variation in open access
uptake across disciplines,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/2006/08/30/full_year_results_from_oxford_op.html
[6] Richard Gedye: Open about open access: we share preliminary findings
from our open access experiments, in: Oxford Journals Update for
Librarians, Issue 2, Winter 2006
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_winter06.pdf
[7] Presentation slides, Audio of Panel discussion and final report,
"Asessing the impact
of open access: Preliminary findings from Oxford Journals", presented at
the Oxford
open access workshop, June 2006,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_workshop.htm
[8] Kate Stringer, Oxford Journals open access pricing adjustments,
posted to liblicense-l, Sun, 12 Aug 2007 15:28:30 EDT,
http://www.library.yale.edu/~llicense/ListArchives/0708/msg00050.html
cf. also comment by Peter Suber on an earlier liblicense-l announcement,
Oxford reduces prices on 28 hybrid journals
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/07/oxford-reduces-prices-on-26-hybrid.html
[9] Martin Richardson: Oxford Open prices adjusted for open access uptake,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Issue 2, Winter 2007/2008
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/oxford_open.pdf
[10] Mandy Hill: Oxford Open prices adjusted for third year in a row,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2008
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_autumn08.pdf
[11] Claire Bird: Case Study: Oxford Journals' adventures in open access,
in: Learned Publishing 21 No. 3 (July 2008), 200-208), DOI:
10.1087/095315108X288910
http://alpsp.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp/2008/00000021/00000003/art00006
[12] Martin Richardson: Oxford Journals makes a change to its pricing
policy,
in: Oxford Journals Update for Librarians, Autumn 2009
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/for_librarians/update_summer09.pdf
[13] Oxford Open Pricing. New charges -- for all papers accepted on or
after 1 December 2009,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/charges.html#New... [visited
Mon, Oct 19, 2009]
[14] Oxford Journals / Frequently Asked Questions: Oxford Open,
http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/oxford_open.html
[15] The data for this paper have been compiled in the spreadsheet
http://www.ub.uni-stuttgart.de/ejournals/OUP_2010_online-only_price_adjustments.xls
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