Tag: APC

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The Political Economics of Open Access Publishing – A series

Victory Press of Type used by SFPP
Victory Press of Type used by SFPP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the odd things about scholarly publishing is how little any particular group of stakeholders seems to understand the perspective of others. It is easy to start with researchers ourselves, who are for the most part embarrassingly ignorant of what publishing actually involves. But those who have spent a career in publishing are equally ignorant (and usually dismissive to boot) of researchers’ perspectives. Each in turn fail to understand what libraries are or how librarians think. Indeed the naive view that libraries and librarians are homogenous is a big part of the problem. Librarians in turn often fail to understand the pressures researchers are under, and are often equally ignorant of what happens in a professional publishing operation. And of course everyone hates the intermediaries.

That this is a political problem in a world of decreasing research resources is obvious. What is less obvious is the way that these silos have prevented key information and insights from travelling to the places where they might be used. Divisions that emerged a decade ago now prevent the very collaborations that are needed, not even to build new systems, but to bring together the right people to realise that they could be built.

I’m increasingly feeling that the old debates (what’s a reasonable cost, green vs gold, hybrid vs pure) are sterile and misleading. That we are missing fundamental economic and political issues in funding and managing a global scholarly communications ecosystem by looking at the wrong things. And that there are deep and damaging misunderstandings about what has happened, is happening, and what could happen in the future.

Of course, I live in my own silo. I can, I think, legitimately claim to have seen more silos than the average; in jobs, organisations and also disciplines. So it seems worth setting down that perspective. What I’ve realised, particularly over the past few months is that these views have crept up on me, and that there are quite a few things to be worked through, so this is not a post, it is a series, maybe eventually something bigger. Here I want to set out some headings, as a form of commitment to writing these things down. And to continuing to work through these things in public.

I won’t claim that this is all thought through, nor that I’ve got (even the majority of) it right. What I do hope is that in getting things down there will be enough here to be provocative and useful, and to help us collectively solve, and not just continue to paper over, the real challenges we face.

So herewith a set of ideas that I think are important to work through. More than happy to take requests on priorities, although the order seems roughly to make sense in my head.

  1. What is it publishers do anyway?
  2. What’s the technical problem in reforming scholarly publishing
  3. The marginal costs of article publishing: Critiquing the Standard Analytics Paper and follow up
  4. What are the assets of a journal?
  5. A journal is a club: New Working Paper
  6. Economies of scale
  7. The costs (and savings) of community (self) management
  8. Luxury brands, platform brands and emerging markets (or why Björn might be right about pricing)
  9. Constructing authority: Prestige, impact factors and why brand is not going away
  10. Submission shaping, not selection, is the key to a successful publishing operation
  11. Challenges to the APC model I: The myth of “the cost per article”
  12. Challenges to the APC model II: Fixed and variable costs in scholarly publishing
  13. Alternative funding models and the risks of a regulated market
  14. If this is a service industry why hasn’t it been unbundled already (or where is the Uber of scholarly publishing?)
  15. Shared infrastructure platforms supporting community validation: Quality at scale. How can it be delivered and what skills and services are needed?
  16. Breaking the deadlock: Where are the points where effective change can be started?
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The parable of the garage: Why the business model shift is so hard

An auto mechanic works on a rally car at the 2...
Image via Wikipedia

Mike Taylor has a parable on the Guardian Blog about research communication and I thought it might be useful to share one that I have been using in talks recently. For me it illustrates just how silly the situation is, and how hard it is to break out of the mindset of renting access to content for the incumbent publishers. It also, perhaps, has a happier ending.

Imagine a world very similar to our own. People buy cars, they fill them with fuel, they pay road tax and these things largely work as well as they do in our own world. There is just one difference, when a car needs its annual service and is taken to a garage – just as we do – for its mechanical checkup and maintenance. In return for the service, the car is then gifted to the mechanic, who in turn provides it back to the owner for a rental fee.

Some choose to do their own servicing, or form clubs where they can work together to help service each other’s cars, but this is both hard work, and to be frank, a little obsessive and odd. Most people are perfectly happy to hand over the keys and then rent them back. It works just fine. The trouble is society is changing, there is an increase in public transport, the mechanics are worried about their future, and the users seem keen to do new and strange things with the cars. They want to use them for work purposes, they want to loan them to friends, in some cases they event want to use them to teach others to drive – possibly even for money.

Now for the mechanic, this is a concern on two levels. First they are uncertain about their future as the world seems to be changing pretty fast. How can they provide certainty for themselves? Secondly all these new uses seem to have the potential to make money for other people. That hardly seems fair and the mechanics want a slice of that income, derived as it is from their cars. So looking closely at their existing contracts they identify that the existing agreements only provide for personal use. No mention is made of work use, certainly not of lending it to others, and absolutely not for teaching.

For the garage, in this uncertain world, this is a godsend. Here are a whole set of new income streams. They can provide for the users to do all these new things, they have a diversified income stream, and everyone is happy! They could call it “Universal Uses” – a menu of options that car users can select from according to their needs and resources. Everyone will understand that this is a fair exchange. The cars are potentially generating more money and everyone gets a share of it, both the users and the real owners, the mechanics.

Unfortunately the car users aren’t so happy. They object to paying extra. After all they feel that the garage is already recouping the costs of  doing the service and making a healthy profit so why do they need more? Having to negotiate each new use is a real pain in the backside and the fine print seems to be so fine that every slight variation requires a new negotiation and a new payment. Given the revolution in the possible uses they might want to be putting their cars to isn’t this just slowing down progress? Many of them even threaten to do their own servicing.

The problem for the garages is that they face a need for new equipment and staff training. Each time they see a new use that they don’t charge for they see a lost sales opportunity. They spend money on getting the best lawyers to draw up new agreements, make concessions on one use to try and shore up the market for another. At every stage there’s a need to pin everything down, lock down the cars, ensure they can’t be used for unlicensed purposes, all of which costs more money, leading to a greater need to focus on different possibilities for charging. And every time they do this it puts them more and more at odds with their customers. But they’re so focussed on a world view in which they need to charge for every possible different use of the “their” cars that they can’t see a way out beyond identifying each new possible use as it comes up and pinning it to the wall with a new contract and a new charge and new limitations to prevent any unexpected new opportunities for income being lost.

But things are changing. There’s a couple of radical new businesses down the road, BMC Motors and PLoS Garages. They do things differently. They charge up front for the maintenance and service but then allow the cars to be used for any purpose whatsoever. There’s a lot of scepticism – will people really pay for a service up front? How can people be sure that the service is any good? After all if they get the money when you get your car back what incentive do they have to make sure it keeps working? But there’s enough aggravation for a few people to start using them.

And gradually the view starts to shift. Where there is good service people want to come back with their new cars – they discover entirely new possibilities of use because they are free to experiment, earn more money, by more cars. The idea spreads and there is a slow but distinct shift – the whole economy gets a boost as the all of the licensing costs simply drop out of the system. But the thing that actually drives the change? It’s all those people who just got sick of having to go back to the garage every time they wanted to do something new. In the end the irritation and waste of time in negotiating for every new use just isn’t worth their time and effort. Paying up front is clean, clear, and simple. And lets everyone get on with the things they really want to do.

 

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