Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Is Open Access financially viable and does it achieve wider dissemination?

Martin RichardsonManaging DirectorOxford Journals

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Why we are experimenting with Open Access

Our experiments are designed to discover whether Open Access models can achieve wider, more cost effective dissemination than subscription-based models

But in order to be widely adopted Open Access models will also need to be financially viable and accepted by authors and research funders

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

The need to collect real data on:

• Effect of OA on usage

• Financial sustainability

• Author response

An evidence-based approach

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

• Optional open access – Oxford Open

• Full open access – Nucleic Acids Research

• Sponsored Open Access –Evidence Based Alternative & Complementary Medicine

Open Access – three financial models

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

• 54 Journals participating across a broad range of subjects

• Author charges £800/£1500 depending on whether author based at subscribing institution

• Subscription prices to be adjusted in proportion to % of pages published OA in prior year

Model 1: Optional Open Access

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Model 2: Full Open Access

• Author charge of £1250 per paper

• Discounted charge of 50% for authors from institutions with “institutional membership”

• Institutional membership rate = £1900

• Free or reduced rates for authors from developing countries

• Waivers available for other authors in case of financial hardship

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

• New Journal launched 2004

• High proportion of authors from developing countries

• More than 50% non-research articles

Model 3: Sponsored Open Access

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

• Print version sold on subscription

• Online version Open Access for 2004-7

• No author charges

• Fixed costs covered by sponsorship grant

• From 2008, will move to subscription-based model for non-research articles

• Author charges may be introduced in the future

Model 3: Sponsored Open Access

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Do authors want OA?

Oxford Open uptake 2006

Subject Area No. of Journals

Papers Published

OA Papers

% Uptake

Medicine 22 3945 180 5.3

Life Sciences 17 3050 321 7.6

Social Sciences & Humanities

12 405 6 1.1

Mathematics 3 304 5 1.8

Total 54 7704 512 6.6

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

NAR: Daily article views for 2003-200514000

12000

10000

8000

6000

4000

2000

0

Does OA increase usage?

Source: Ciber study, 2006

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Does OA increase usage?

All articles - 1st 12 months

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

-1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Months after publication

Mea

n ac

cess

per

art

icle

21s

21oa

22s

22oa

Source: LISU Survey 2006

Bioinformatics: downloads

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Is OA financially viable?

2003 $

2004 $

2005 $

Print Subscriptions 3355 2869 2153

Online Subscriptions 354 965 0

Institutional Membership 0 0 206

Author Charges 99 385 952

Other Income 416 428 311

4224 4647 3622

NAR: Income per article

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Nucleic Acids Research

All Authors

Research grant 55

Institutional funds 12

Departmental funds 7

Personal funds 2

Don’t know 17

Other 5

Sources of funding for paying OA charges

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

• When given the choice, most authors decide not to take up OA option if asked to pay

• OA seems to generate additional access, but the amount is variable from journal to journal

• OA does not yet seem to be financially viable without some kind of subsidy

Some Tentative Conclusions…..

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

CIBER - Usage analysis of journals participating in Oxford Open with uptake of 10% or more

LISU - Usage/citation analysis of NAR, Bioinformatics and Journal of Experimental Botany.

OUP - Continue to monitor financial impact of different OA models.

Experimenting with Open Access: Next Steps

Society for Endocrinology Meeting, March 2007

Further Information

Description of Oxford Journals OA models, FAQ’s and titles participating

www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/

Report of one-day conference presenting results of Oxford OA experiments

www.oxfordjournals.org/news/oa_report.pdf

CIBER/UCL Centre for Publishing

www.publishing.ucl.ac.uk/research.html

LISU

www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dils/lisu/index.html

JISC Conference on OA, September 2006

For further information, please contact

Martin RichardsonManaging Director

Tel: +44 (0) 1865 353780

Fax: +44 (0) 1865 353200