Choice? Springer Ups the Ante on Open Access
In a headline-grabbing announcement, Springer, now the second-largest commercial STM publisher in the world, has announced that authors publishing in any of its journals can now choose to make their work freely, "permanently" available in return for an author charge. But is Springer’s new Open Choice program a boost for open access or simply a bold strategy to compete with both burgeoning open access journals and traditional commercial publishers? Under the program, which begins immediately, authors can choose between making their work available through the existing subscription models or pay a $3000 author charge, plus any other applicable fees such as page charges for print editions, to have their articles freely accessible to the public through Springerlink, Springer’s online platform. Each journal will feature a mix of paid and free content.
Springer CEO Derk Haank, former CEO of industry leader Elsevier, said the move was designed to "respond to the demands of the small group of researchers and certain publicly funded research communities" calling for wider access. "We want to offer our authors both options and let them choose," said Haank. "Ultimately, the customers will decide what they want." While it remains to be seen as to how well the new Open Choice program will perform, it has already succeeded in launching Springer into the headlines, and could at the very least help the upstart company get a leap on its competition. The number two player in the field, Springer was created by British investment firms Cinven and Candover, which merged Kluwer Academic Publishers and Bertelsmann Springer in 2002. The timing of the announcement is also worthy of note–just as the UK Parliament prepares to release its report on its recently concluded inquiry into STM publishing. Open access and pricing issues were heavily discussed during the inquiry.
BioMed Central: Springer’s Open Choice Is Not To Be Confused with Open Access
On the surface, Springer’s "author pays" model might be welcomed by open access advocates. But while the British newspaper the INDEPENDENT hailed Springer as the first commercial publisher to "partially" embrace open access, that’s not quite the case, says open access pioneer, Jan Velterop, CEO of BioMed Central. "It is indeed not open access," Velterop told the LJ Academic Newswire. "To be fair to Springer, they know it isn’t open access, and that’s why they call it Open Choice." True open access, Velterop says, implies by definition "that all use is fair use as long as the author and article are properly cited."
Springer’s program breaks from that definition is some key ways. First, a strict copyright policy remains in effect for Open Choice authors. While Springer will make those articles available to users for free, the company continues to require "standard consent-to-publish and transfer-of- copyright agreements" from authors, which it says is necessary to protect authors’ rights. It also forbids "copying, reproducing, distributing, or posting of the publisher’s version of the article on a third party server." Velterop also points out that Open Choice articles have made no commitment to be archived in an open access repository, such as PubMed Central. That, he notes, makes guaranteeing open access in perpetuity "virtually impossible."
Velterop says researchers may ultimately be deterred from Springer’s Open Choice program because of a more basic shortcoming: price. "What [authors] have to gain is not in any way in proportion to the cost of $3000," he contends. At $3000, plus any applicable other charges, such as page charges for print editions, Springer’s price is more than double the price of the Public Library of Science’s (PLoS) $1500 author fees, and $2475 more than BMC’s current $525 author charge. PLoS, however, is a new venture and its officials acknowledge they don’t yet know what true author costs will be. For its part, BMC also has yet to become a self-sustaining business, and has heard concerns over its recently revamped institutional membership pricing as well as criticism that its author fees may be unrealistically low. Still, it is questionable whether Springer’s Open Choice service will woo researchers predisposed to open access. It is also unclear whether the program will offer much relief for academic libraries.
By definition, free content in Springer’s Open Choice program would appear alongside traditional, subscription-based content. That means libraries will still have to subscribe to Springer journals, while the pioneering open access journals are available freely over the Internet. To compensate for this mix of free and paid content, Springer journal prices will be adjusted annually based on the number of Open Choice articles in each journal. Should the number of Open Choice articles increase, then subscription prices would decrease and vice versa. Such a scenario could add another wrinkle to library budget planning.
In Another Twist, Oxford Open Access Journal Gets Sponsorship, Raises Questions
We have the "author pays" version of open access. Now we can add to that the "somebody else pays" version. Oxford University Press has introduced a new open access journal that will be free of author charges for a decade–though perhaps not free of skepticism. Oxford describes EVIDENCE- BASED COMPLEMENTARY AND ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE (eCAM) as "an international, peer-reviewed journal that seeks to understand the sources and to encourage rigorous research in this new, yet ancient world of complementary and alternative medicine." The journal, which has recently published its first issue, will focus on traditional Asian healing systems. Rather than charging libraries or individuals subscription fees, and rather than charging author fees, the journal will be supported for a decade by the Ishikawa Natural Medicinal Products Research Center (INMPRC) in Japan. The journal’s managing editor is Professor Nobuo Yamaguchi–president of INMPRC. Asked if that did not present a conflict of interest, OUP spokeswoman Rachel Goode said that, as a policy, "any paper submitted by an author based at or funded by the INMPRC is not handled by Professor Yamaguchi." Instead, those papers will be handled by professor [Edwin] Cooper." Cooper is a founding editor-in-chief of eCAM and a professor of neurobiology at UCLA. An article in the journal describes Yamaguchi and Cooper as 25-year friends. See www.ecam.oupjournals.org.
Goode says Oxford is following the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors guidelines (www.icmje.org/index.html#ethic). Among the guidelines: "Editors should publish regular disclosure statements about potential conflicts of interests related to the commitments of journal staff." No such disclosure statement appeared in the first issue of eCAM. In announcing the journal, Martin Richardson, managing director of OUP Journals Division, said that research in alternative medicine was enjoying growing interest, but "adopting an author-pays OA funding model would be inappropriate in this market where many potential authors are working with limited research funding, or are based at less wealthy institutions." This is a third open access initiative from Oxford, which has certainly shown a willingness to experiment with its journals program.
NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH recently began a mandatory author- pays model, while the JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY has an optional author-pays model.
[Library Journal Academic Newswire (TM), The Publishing Report, July 8, 2004]
