Old and new business models for academic journals

Pierre Mounier – EAEPE 2013 - Bobigny

Academic Journals : old and new business models

Shifting from old to new business model

Subscription model : readers (libraries) pay

Open access model : authors (institutions) pay

Incentives

• Print and digital: from high marginal distribution costs to high fixed publication costs

• Serials crisis and the libraries mutiny

• Development of succesful Gold Open Access models

PlosThe perfect « pay to say » model

Diversity of business models

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Our experience with OpenEdition

« too successful » open access journals for full institutional up front funding

« Too big to work ? » : about the transition costs to gold APC model• June 2012 : « Finch report » evaluated the transition cost to

£50-60 million a year on top of £175 million spent on subscriptions.

• RCUK estimated its needs to £100 millions in the next 5 years to cover APC costs

• Sept. 2013 UK House of Commons report : « At a time when the budgets of research organisations and HEIs are under great pressure, it is unacceptable that the Government has issued, without public consultation, an open access policy that will require considerable subsidy from research budgets in order to maintain journal subscriptions and cover APCs […] We are concerned that the expectation appears to be that universities and research organisations will fund the balance of APCs and open access costs from their own reserves.  »

OpenEdition Freemium : leveraging the libraries budget to

support open access journals

Freemium : open access to content, premium services to libraries

« Subscribing » to open access

• Platform fixed cost funded by institutions

• 66% of Freemium income to journals

• 33% to develop new services

• 100% reinvested for open access

• 100 journals participating to OE Freemium program

• 2012 : 39 libraries subscribing

• 2013 : 60 libraries subscribing

• 2014 : 83 libraries subscribing

OpenEdition Freemium is a pragmatic AND a political proposition to academic community…

… in order to build an alliance between scholars, publishers and librairies to support

open access & knowledge dissemination

Thank you !

pierre.mounier@openedition.org