2. Content
♦ Introduction
♦ Background
♦ Definitions of Open Access
♦ Open Archives and Repositories
♦ Key Drivers
♦ Open Access Market
♦ Open Access Business Models
3. Contents continued….
♦ Cost Structures
♦ Funding Agencies
♦ Open Access Publishers
♦ Strategic Issues for Publishers
♦ The Future of Open Access
♦ Q and A
4. Introduction
♦ Open access journals provide free access
to research articles
♦ Open access has a different business
model for electronic journals
♦ Advocates are authors, academics,
librarians and readers
♦ Publishers need to heed the messages
from the market
5. Background: Print journals
♦ Earliest journals in the 17th century
– Academies and societies
– Peer review
♦ Journal Authorship
– No payments
– Copyright transfer
– Indirect rewards of tenure, prestige
♦ Post WW II journals
– Increased funding in science
– Increasing number of scientists
– Proliferation of journals
6. Background: Electronic Journals
♦ Before the 1990s
– Bibliographies and full text databases
– Improvements in communication technologies
– Improvements in production technologies
♦ Mid-1990s
– WWW
– Full text journals became possible
– Multimedia and interactive
– Different business models possible, i.e. open access
7. Key Drivers
1. Ubiquitous Internet access and technology
2. Increasing volume of research
3. Print publishing cost structures and escalating
journal prices
4. Consolidation of commercial publishing
houses,
5. Librarians looking for low-cost alternatives to
spiraling serials prices
6. New forms and uses of research in electronic
media, i.e. open source human genome
sequences
8. Definitions of Open Access
♦ Budapest/Bethesda/Berlin
– Free access to electronic research articles in the
sciences and humanities
– Read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link
– Attribution of author—no copyright transfer
– Deposit original paper in an open archive
Alternatively:
– Open access after 6 months to one year
– Open access for developing countries
♦ Publishers traditionally have not allowed these
activities without permission
9. Open Repositories and Archives
♦ Collections of articles, often by discipline,
i.e.. Physics
♦ Hosted by institutions, government, i.e. D-
space at MIT, PubMed at NIH
♦ Free access for all
♦ Standards for meta-data to enable cross-
search
♦ Threat to primary and secondary
publishers and aggregators
10. Open Access Business Models
♦ Free access does not mean cost-free
♦ Open access models shift the payment from the
reader to the author for electronic access
-- $300-$1500 article processing fees, paid for by
research grants
– Corporate and library fees for affiliated authors’
paper
– Grants and subsidies for start-up operations
– Hybrid models with option for open access for a fee
to the author
– Other sources of revenue to support journal
11. Cost Structures
♦ Digital publishing is key to open access
♦ First copy costs are $2,085 to $4,000
♦ Printing, paper and delivery are a large portion
of print journals costs
♦ Electronic publishing eliminates 30%
♦ New tools speed up and automate peer review,
editing=lower first copy costs
♦ Ergo, open access revenue models will work
with new cost structures
12. Size of the Open Access
Journals Market
♦ Open Access Directory list 1,106 journals
– www.doaj.org
♦ Most are single titles, no print
♦ 1999—4,000 electronic journals
♦ 2004—14,147 electronic journals
♦ Estimates of scholarly print journals range from
15,000 peer-reviewed to 70,000-80,000
worldwide
♦ Revenues for OA journals are miniscule
13. Open Access Publishers
♦ BioMed Central
♦ Public Library of Science
♦ Scientific World
♦ Berkeley Electronic Press
♦ Public Knowledge Project
♦ Company of Biologists
14. Funding Agencies
♦ National Science Foundation
♦ Howard Hughes Medical Institute
♦ Wellcome Trust, UK
♦ Austrian Science Fund
♦ Scholarly Publishing and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC)
15. Strategic Issues for Publishers
Open a access puts pressure on all
publishers
♦ Different publishers/different threats
– Professional associations and societies
•Mission vs. business
– Non-profit presses and organizations
•Mission vs. independence
– Commercial publishers
•Pressure on prices and profits
16. Strategic Issues continued…
♦ Opportunity to rethink publishing strategies
♦ Different publishers/different mix:
– Move to electronic-only publication
– Allow free access to archives after six months or one
year
– Allow authors to deposit articles in archives
– Allow free access to developing countries
– Allow authors to retain copyright
– Adopt and test a hybrid version of open access
– Develop new services and benefits for readers
17. The Future of Open Access
♦ Certain disciplines may be more suitable
to open access—funding, readership
♦ Hybrid models are more sustainable for
traditional publishers
♦ Open access will moderate journals prices
♦ Readers and libraries will benefit from
richer, more useful electronic publications
♦ Both types of publishers will look more
alike over time
