Researchers in High Energy Physics (HEP) live for that moment when they can observe results, interpret data, and raise new questions. When it arrives, after a lifetime of planning, funding, and building an experiment, they set aside emotional attachment and let the data speak.
Since 1991, virtually all HEP research papers have been freely available through an online database. This repository, now known as arXiv, inspired the Green model of the Open Access movement: Scholars submit author-formatted versions of their refereed papers to open-access repositories. With this simple action, they create an open-access alternative to the formal scholarly-communication system, which mostly consists of pay-walled journals. The HEP scholarly-communication market gives us an opportunity to observe the impact of 100% Green Open Access. Following the scientists' example, let us take a moment, observe this twenty-year-long large-scale experiment, and let the data speak.
When publishers digitized scholarly journals in the 1990s, they added site licenses as an add-on option to paper-journal subscriptions. Within a few years, paper-journal subscriptions all but disappeared. At first, publishers continued the super-inflationary price trajectory of subscriptions. Then, they steepened the price curve with assorted technology fees and access charges for digitized back-files of old issues. The growing journal-pricing crisis motivated many university administrators to support the Open Access movement. While the latter is about access, not about the cost of publishing, it is impossible to separate the two issues.
In 1997, the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA) launched the Journal of High Energy Physics (JHEP) as an open-access journal. JHEP was an initial step towards a larger goal, now referred to as Gold Open Access: replacing the current scholarly-communication system with a barrier-free system of journals without pay walls. The JHEP team implemented a highly efficient system to process submitted papers, thereby reducing the journal's operating costs to the bare minimum. The remaining expenses were covered by a handful of research organizations, which agreed to a cost-sharing formula for the benefit of their community. This institutional-funding model proved unsustainable, and JHEP converted to a site-licensed journal in 2003. This step back seems strange now, because JHEP could have copied the funding model of BioMed Central, which had launched in 2000 and funded open access by charging authors a per-article processing fee. Presumably, JHEP's leadership considered this author-pay model too experimental and too risky after their initial attempt at open access. In spite of its difficult start, JHEP was an academic success and subsequently prospered financially as a site-licensed journal produced by Springer under the auspices of SISSA.
Green Open Access delivers the immediate benefit of access. Proponents argue it will also, over time, fundamentally change the scholarly-communication market. The twenty-year HEP record lends support to the belief that Green Open Access has a moderating influence: HEP journals are priced at more reasonable levels than other disciplines. However, the HEP record thus far does not support the notion that Green Open Access creates significant change:
- Only one event occurred that could have been considered disruptive: JHEP capturing almost 20% of the HEP market as an open-access journal. Instead, this event turned into a case of reverse disruption!
- There was no change in the business model. All leading HEP publishers of 2012 still use pre-1991 business channels. They still sell to the same clients (acquisition departments of academic libraries) through the same intermediaries (journal aggregators). They sell a different product (site licenses instead of subscriptions), and the transactions differ, but the business model survives unchanged.
- No journals with significant HEP market share disappeared. Even with arXiv as an open-access alternative, canceling an established HEP journal is politically toxic at any university with a significant HEP department. This creates a scholarly-communication market that is highly resistant to change.
- Journal prices continued on a trajectory virtually unaffected by turbulent economic times.
In an attempt to re-engineer the market, influential HEP organizations launched the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP³). It is negotiating with publishers the conversion of established HEP journals to Gold Open Access. To pay for this, hundreds of research institutions world-wide must pool the funds they are currently spending on HEP site licenses. Negotiated article processing charges will, in aggregate, preserve the revenue stream from academia to publishers.
If SCOAP³ proves sustainable, it will become the de-facto sponsor and manager of all HEP publishing world-wide. It will create a barrier-free open-access system of refereed articles produced by professional publishers. This is an improvement over arXiv, which contains mostly author-formatted material.
Many have praised the initiative. Others have denounced it. Those who observe with scientific detachment merely note that, after twenty years of 100% Green Open Access, the HEP establishment really wants Gold Open Access.
The HEP open-access experiment continues.
"HEP journals are priced at more reasonable levels than other disciplines."
ReplyDeleteIsn't this primarily a result of competing with the APS journals that are the gold standard for cost effective publishing? The Elsevier titles have show a dramatic decrease in the number of articles published recently and had to drop their prices dramatically ... isn't their continued existence primarily due to 'Big Deals'?
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"canceling an established HEP journal is politically toxic at any university with a significant HEP department."
This isn't always true. Perhaps because everyone uses arXiv and a majority publish in PRD or PRL?
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"the HEP establishment really wants Gold Open Access."
Is it the establishment or Salvatore Mele, that has come up with this obviously unsustainable business model?
Can you think of another 'business'(not a charity) that depends on voluntary contributions for its operating funds?
I almost agree with every one of your points.
Delete1. Price
I did not say Green Open Access moderated prices. I only said:
"The twenty-year HEP record lends support to the belief that Green Open Access has a moderating influence:"
That is a very weak statement of correlation. I actually agree with you that it is more likely that the prominence of community-oriented scholarly societies as HEP publishers had a larger influence than Green Open Access on prices.
The main point is that Green Open Access did not any disruptive influence.
2. Canceling journals
Yes, over the years, there have been cases of cancellation at some universities, but not resulting in any market disruption. Have the journals you canceled disappeared or do they still exist?
3. Establishment
I am going by the long list of statements of interest on the SCOAP3 web site. My opinion of the SCOAP3 business model is outside of the scope of this particular blog post, which analyzes the historical data with scientific detachment. There will be other opportunities to discuss SCOAP3 later.
Eric, Everything you say about arXiv leading to green open access, lack of disruption, etc. begs one obvious question, but you don't ask it: why SCOAP?
ReplyDelete"most participants and observers are convinced that the current market is not sustainable..
In an attempt to re-engineer the market". Most markets are expected to evolve naturally, representing the decisions of the many. Because green open access did not naturally disrupt the market for journals, those who view it as 'not sustainable' have preemptively 're-engineered' the market. The few will need to answer the question for the many.
Steve, Thanks for your comment. I indeed do not ask the obvious question. The premise of this post was to observe what happened/is happening.
DeleteMy questions about SCOAP3 (and skepticism) deserve separate treatment later.
JUBILATIO PRAECOX
ReplyDelete"Green Open Access delivers the immediate benefit of access. Proponents argue it will also, over time, fundamentally change the scholarly-communication market. The twenty-year HEP record lends support to the belief that Green Open Access has a moderating influence: HEP journals are priced at more reasonable levels than other disciplines. However, the HEP record thus far does not support the notion that Green Open Access creates significant change…"
Twenty years of Open Access in HEP is not a significant change?
"If SCOAP³ proves sustainable, it will become the de-facto sponsor and manager of all HEP publishing world-wide. It will create a barrier-free open-access system of refereed articles produced by professional publishers. This is an improvement over arXiv, which contains mostly author-formatted material."
Committing a worldwide institutional consortium into paying roughly the same as what it's paying not, in exchange for OA to publisher PDF instead of author versions?
"Those who observe with scientific detachment merely note that, after twenty years of 100% Green Open Access, the HEP establishment really wants Gold Open Access."
With still more setachmanet, it sounds as if HEP researchers really wanted -- and gave themselves-- a barrier-free open-access system of refereed articles 20 years ago.
The ones that seems to "really want" Gold OA are a consortium of institutional libraries…
Have patience. HEP researchers provided Green OA unmandated. Once the rest of the world's researchers provide Green OA in response to mandates from their institutions and funders, the "market" changes many desire will follow:
What the research community needs, urgently, is free online access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. Researchers can provide that in two ways: by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). OA self-archiving, once it is mandated by research institutions and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in the hands of the research community) and it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research community's access and impact problems are already solved. If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant cancellation pressure (no one knows whether or when that will happen, because OA Green grows anarchically, article by article, not journal by journal) then the cancellation pressure will cause cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall savings from cancellations grow. If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article publishing costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be high enough to cover them, because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review service provision alone, offloading text-generation onto authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global network of OA Institutional Repositories. Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA.
Stevan:
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments.
>Twenty years of Open Access in HEP is not a significant change?
The context of this statement was about the journal market. The four bullet points expand how there was no change in the journal market.
> Have patience.
The premise of this blog post was to look at the record as it stands right now, not to opine or list desires. But let me deviate from that premise here in the comments:
SCOAP3 looks like a preemptive rescue of journals, and it is academia who engineered a scheme of a world-wide cartel that preserves publishers' revenue flow. It is not the publishers. The goldilocks cancellation scenario after 100% Green OA would be nice, but it is not supported by the HEP record.
The record does not fit the usual narrative of publishers vs academia.
That's for a future blog post.
HI Eric,
ReplyDeleteCORRECTION 1: roughly the same as what it's paying *now* (not "not")
CORRECTION 2: With still more *detachment* (not "setachmanet")
And, yes, SCOAP3 is indeed pointless pre-emptive lock-in of the status quo (engineered by some academics and some libraries -- certainly not by "academia") in a field (HEP) that already has Green OA, unmandated, and could instead be doing so much more to support and promote mandated Green OA in all other disciplines.
But it's still far from over. Green OA mandates are imminent in the EU, Australia, and perhaps at long last in the US. And RCUK may still fix its policy into a workable one, despite the Finch Fiasco.
Green OA does not change the market, directly -- and certainly not until it's universal. But universal Green OA will certainly make journal affordability no longer the life-or-death matter it is now. (Think about it.)
GREENILOCKS (not Goldilocks!)
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