Open Access Pricing
May 27, 2009
A happy quack to the reader who sent me a copy of a presentation given by Andrew Wray, Group Publisher, Institute of Physics. He gave a talk called “How the Web Has Transformed Scientific Journals” in June 2007. I flipped through the PDF and noted one slide that struck me as important in my online research. You can find the talk online here. The information I noted appeared on slide foils 35 and 36.
Mr. Wray pointed out that new pricing models for online journals could have these characteristics:
- Discounts to subscribers who take only the electronic edition of the publication
- Tiered pricing by size of university subscribing to a journal
- Discounts for consortia
- Discounts or free access for small institutions or institutions in developing countries.
I also noted four interesting points on slide 36. He noted that the Web facilitates “open access models”. The brief description of this notion provides a check list of ways to generate revenue from digital publications; specifically:
- The author pays
- Institution pays a “membership fee” to join the publisher’s community
- Sponsorship which I think means an organization pays the publisher
- Advertising; that is, something like the Google model.
As I thought about these points, several ideas occurred to me:
First, Google at any point in time could morph from a “finding” service to a full-scale publishing service. Google has the intake, monetization, and distribution mechanisms in place, just not knit into a digital publishing enterprise.
Second, traditional scholarly publishing companies may find themselves in a tough spot if a sponsorship for a particular line of research runs afoul of a social or regulatory guideline. I don’t want to get into specifics of journals publishing material that may not hold up to additional scholarly scrutiny, but sponsorships have upsides and downsides.
Finally, the shift to real time research may disrupt some of the expectations about advertising. Are scholarly publishers ready for the dynamic free-for-all that may be emerging for new social information services. A scholarly article, like a video or MP3, can be Tweeted. Ads may not work in that medium as they do in Web search.
Stephen Arnold, May 27, 2009
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