Re: Institutional Journal Costs in an Open Access Environment

[Ray English <Ray.English@oberlin.edu>]

Bill's revised figures don't change the conclusions I explained 
in my post of April 27.

It remains true that a Spring Open Choice model ($3,000 per 
article author fee) , if adopted across all of the journals Bill 
studied, would result in substantial savings for all of the 
institutions, including the large research university.  That 
institution (University of Michigan) would only pay more under an 
open access model if authors' fees exceeded $3,363 (assuming no 
authors fees were paid from grant funds).  It is true that 
research universities will pay more than non-research 
universities under an author pays model (as they do now), but 
(judging from Bill's data) it's not necessarily true that they 
will pay more than they currently do under a subscription or 
licensing model.  That depends on the size of the authors' fees 
-- and also the extent to which authors' fees can be supported by 
grant funds.

Ray English
Director of Libraries
Oberlin College
440-775-8287

On May 10, 2006, at 9:08 PM, William Walters wrote:

> Good afternoon.
>
> I have discovered and corrected a methodological error in my 
> study that has some bearing on the results.  I've posted the 
> corrected paper -- the version that will appear in JASIST -- at 
> <http://www.library.millersville.edu/public_html/walters/ 
> journal_costs.pdf>
>
> The correction affects the total system-wide revenue estimates 
> as well as the results for the Equal-Revenue Model -- the model 
> in which total Open Access revenue (from all institutions 
> combined) is held equal to total subscription revenue under the 
> current system.
>
> My original paper ensured that the Equal-Revenue assumption 
> held true *for my sample* -- a stratified random sample that 
> includes two or three institutions from each U.S. News & World 
> Report category (Doctoral Universities, Master's Universities, 
> etc.).
>
> The problem with the old version of the paper is that the the 
> sample does not reflect the true distribution of colleges and 
> universities among the various institutional categories.  The 
> sample includes three doctoral institutions and two master's 
> institutions, for example, although there are actually more 
> than twice as many Master's Universities as Doctoral 
> Universities. The aggregate revenue estimates must therefore be 
> adjusted to account for the actual number of institutions 
> within each category.  (The new, adjusted, revenue estimates 
> are presented in Table 4 and described on pages 11 and 12.)
>
> In the old version of the paper I relied strictly on the sample 
> data, underestimating the relative number of small colleges -- 
> institutions with low publishing productivity.  I therefore 
> overestimated the total (systemwide) PLoS-Model revenue and 
> consequently underestimated the amount that would need to be 
> paid by the research universities in order to "make up the 
> difference."
>
> My general conclusions are not affected by this correction, and 
> the abstract for the paper remains the same as before.  There 
> are substantial changes in the quantitative results, however. 
> Specifically, I now estimate that within the four disciplines 
> included in the study,
>
> -- the PLoS Model brings in only 15% as much revenue as the 
> Conventional Model -- not 28%, as reported earlier
>
> -- a switch from the current pricing model to the Equal-Revenue 
> Model would increase the University of Michigan's costs by 237% 
> -- not 83%, as reported earlier
>
> -- in general, institutions larger than Brandeis (about 1.1 
> million volumes) can expect to pay more under the Equal-Revenue 
> Model -- not institutions with more than 3.9 million volumes, 
> as reported earlier.
>
> As several people have mentioned, these results are valid only 
> if we assume that all Open Access journals charge publication 
> fees, and that academic institutions are responsible for paying 
> those fees (with tuition money, grant money, government 
> funding, or some other source of income).
>
> These corrections do not alter the main conclusion of the paper 
> -- that the wholesale implementation of either Open Access 
> model would reduce costs for the vast majority of institutions 
> while dramatically increasing the proportion of the total 
> system-wide cost paid by the major research universities.
>
> Bill
>
> William H. Walters, PhD
> Assistant Professor of Librarianship
> Collection Development Librarian
> Helen A. Ganser Library
> Millersville University
> Millersville, PA 17551-0302