how much does it cost ssp2015 / peerj

Academic Publishing is Evolving…

How Much Does it Cost

SSP May 2015

Pete Binfield

Co-Founder and Publisher

PeerJ

@ThePeerJwww.PeerJ.com

@[email protected]


• What is the ‘legacy’ (subscription) journal model?– Selling a product (a journal) to a customer (a librarian)– Ownership of the product (to prevent piracy)– Creating and distributing a physical product

• This has led to:– A need to publish the ‘best’ journals, because customers only want

to buy the ‘best’ content– A system of filtering articles into the ‘best’ journals has thus

evolved which results in articles being re-reviewed multiple times– The existence of journal ‘brands’ now also serve as a proxy for

quality and prestige

• And a whole infrastructure based on the distribution and business models:– Internal departments at the publisher for legal counsel, billing,

collections, rights & permissions, sales, warehousing, dispatch etc– Library focused activities such as check-in, tracking, inter-library

loans, Collection development librarians– Third party players such as subscription agents

Current costs to the ‘system’


• Internal inefficiencies at the publisher• Internal inefficiencies at the library level• Additional costs due to additional players

in the marketplace• System wide inefficiencies for academia

Current costs OF the ‘system’


– ‘Born Open Access’ publishers have no need for many of the internal inefficiencies that legacy publishers carry. In addition, by starting afresh, they can create new efficiencies.

– In a ‘fully’ OA world, libraries would have no need for many of the inefficient systems they currently maintain

– Although, of course, new intermediaries will evolve (e.g. APC management companies; discovery tools etc)


– If the customer is now the author:

• You no longer need to publish the ‘best’ content in a single (journal) package.

• This led to the ‘PLOS ONE’ editorial model (i.e. publish everything and don’t try to pre-judge the quality)

• If everything were only reviewed once in a PLOS ONE model, then a vast amount of time is saved in academia (reviewer time, editor time etc)

• However, the influence of journal brand remains very strong in the marketplace

– Authors still shop around based on ‘brand’ and ‘prestige’, not price or service levels

– Many OA publishers still try to publish the ‘best’ journals & as a result APCs are unnaturally high


– If the customer is now the author:

• What do they ‘need’ to pay for?– E.g. The ‘base service level’ of peer-review and

publication– Or do they insist on paying for ‘brand’ and

‘prestige’?

• What will they additionally pay for?– E.g. fast track peer review; article promotion

services; manuscript clean up

• Are there are other ‘customers’ with different agendas (e.g. Funders)?


Thank you

SSP May 2015

Pete Binfield

Co-Founder and Publisher

PeerJ

@ThePeerJwww.PeerJ.com

@[email protected]

how much does it cost ssp2015 / peerj

Science