For the past several decades the
research community has been bedevilled with the so-called serials
crisis, the phenomenon by which the cost of
scholarly journals continues to rise at an unsustainable rate.
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| Richard Savory |
Affordability
One of the most significant responses
to this affordability problem was the open access (OA) movement, which in 2002 coalesced
around the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Open access publishing, OA advocates have always argued, will
be cheaper, and therefore sustainable.
In 2004, confronted by the growing demands
of the OA movement, and faced with competition from open access publishers like
BioMed
Central and PLOS,
traditional subscription publishers responded with hybrid OA,
which allows authors to continue publishing in subscription journals but, if
they wish, to choose to make a particular paper open access by paying an
article-processing charge (APC). The first such initiative was Springer’s Open Choice,
which at the time the company’s CEO Derk Haank characterised as a challenge to OA advocates to “put their money where
their mouth is”.
Since hybrid OA APCs are more expensive
than those of pure open access journals (i.e. generally around $3,000 a paper),
take up remained low until research funders like the Wellcome
Trust and Research Councils UK agreed to start paying APCs for their funded authors.
It was quickly apparent however that,
as things stood, hybrid OA could only worsen the affordability
problem, since hybrid OA journals now have not one, but two income streams for
the same article — one from the article-processing charge, another from the
journal subscription, a phenomenon that OA advocates refer to as “double
dipping”.
While publishers said that they would
reduce the subscription price of hybrid journals to reflect the number of
articles in them that had been paid for, what reductions have been made have
been derisory. In any case, such an approach means that those who pay for
hybrid OA are effectively subsidising those that choose not to embrace open
access.
Transparency
Meanwhile,
as subscriptions continued to rise to the point where even the wealthiest
universities in the world began saying that they could
no longer afford all
the journals they needed, concern was also growing about the lack of
transparency in journal pricing — since publishers now rarely sell single
subscriptions at an advertised price, but licences to expensive databases
containing hundreds or thousands of electronic journals (the so-called Big
Deal) for a privately negotiated price. And
in agreeing these Big Deals publishers routinely insisted on the inclusion of a
non-disclosure clause in order to prevent other publishers, and the public,
from knowing what they were charging for their journals.
Concern about the lack of
transparency in pricing came to a head during last year’s inquiry into open
access by the UK House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee (BIS), which in its report recommended “that non-disclosure
clauses should not be included in publishing contracts which involve public
funds.” It added, “If the use of non-disclosure clauses persists, then the
Government should consider referring the matter to the Competition Commission.”
This message appears to have
been taken on board by publishers. That at least is how I interpreted a recent tweet from the Research Libraries UK
executive director, who reported that Elsevier is now the only publisher that
still insists on non-disclosure clauses.
The issue of double dipping
also arose during the BIS Committee inquiry, with many of the witnesses called
to give evidence deprecating it. Perhaps for this reason Jisc,
the organisation that negotiates licensing agreements with publishers on behalf
of UK HEIs, has this year been busy negotiating offsetting agreements with
publishers intended to mitigate or extinguish double dipping.
Thus last month Taylor & Francis published a press release announcing that it had reached agreement with Jisc on (amongst other things) an offsetting regime, and a note on the UCL web site indicates that a similar deal has been agreed with Wiley-Blackwell.
Since the Taylor &
Francis press release does not go into details of how its offsetting works, and
noting that in October Jisc CEO Lorraine Estelle had told Research that she “would not reveal the
offsetting formula for the two publishers” I contacted Jisc in the hope of
clarifying matters. The result is the Q&A below with Jisc’s licensing
manager Richard Savory.
Commercial
sensitivity
What I take from the Q&A is that
whether or not publishers insist on non-disclosure clauses makes
little difference theoretically, since the details may in any case never be revealed (unless
someone undertakes the laborious task
of submitting scores of FoI requests).
This seems evident from what Savory says
below — even where there is no legal gag, he explains, those entering into an
agreement with a publisher may not feel able to divulge the fine details for reasons
of “commercial sensitivity” (i.e. publishers do not want their competitors to
have this information). This reluctance, he adds, flows from the fact that
divulging the information could “put an unnecessary obstacle in the path of a
publisher’s willingness to enter into an agreement with us”.
But we should not conclude from all
this that Jisc itself prefers secrecy. When Estelle told Research in October that she would not reveal the offsetting
formula for the two publishers Jisc was negotiating with, explains Savory, the organisation
was still consulting HEIs about the deal, and so any public comment would have
been premature.
And separately, Estelle agreed to clarify with me what Savory says below about the Taylor & Francis offsetting formula. “I can confirm that the average APC price mentioned by
Richard Savory, in respect of the offset system agreed with Taylor & Francis,
is the average price of an APC in a Taylor & Francis journal — not an
industry average for APC costs. The amount an institution pays in journal
subscriptions is divided by this amount to arrive at the total number of APC
vouchers awarded to that institution. Institutions can then use their vouchers
to fund APCs.”
The key question, of course, is whether
the offsetting formula will eradicate double dipping. When
I put this to Estelle she replied, “This is not an exact science, but my
estimate is that this will on average reduce the cost of APCs by around 75%.
The actual figure, of course depends on how many articles, by authors in each
institution receiving the vouchers, are actually published in the relevant
journals.”
This implies to me that, at best, the
deal could still see a 25% incidence of double dipping. However, Jisc is
committed to monitoring the situation closely and, says Estelle, will make the results
available to the public. “All the offset systems we have agreed with publishers
are new, so we will be collecting data and monitoring their impact. We will
publish the results regularly. We need around 10-12 months of data following
implementation of these offset system to fully understand their impact, so we
aim to publish some results towards the end of 2015.”
Clearly it is vital that this information
is made available to the public. It is the public, after all, that foots the
bill for the scholarly communication system, and so the public should know how effectively its
money is being spent.
A final point to make perhaps is that even
if the offsetting agreements being negotiated by Jisc entirely reduce double
dipping they will not address the fundamental problem that open access was
meant to solve — making scholarly communication affordable.
After all, there is no reason to doubt
that hybrid journals will continue to increase their subscriptions for the
foreseeable future, and if they want access to all the articles in them (not
just those their institution has paid for) universities will have to continue
paying those subscriptions. The current reality would therefore seem to be that
— unless something else changes — open access looks set to co-exist with
subscription publishing, and the larger affordability problem will continue.
It is worth point out, therefore, that the
research community in The Netherlands is seeking to negotiate deals with publishers in a way that appears intended to force subscription
publishers to fully embrace open access.[1]
Might this be a better approach? Could such an approach work in any case?
[1] Whether full open access will
actually prove any less costly than subscription publishing is a separate
topic, of course, and best left for another day.
The interview begins
RP: As I understand it, Jisc
Collections has been negotiating
offsetting agreements with a number of publishers, including Taylor &
Francis and Wiley-Blackwell. Taylor & Francis has put out a press release,
so clearly that deal has been finalised. But what is the situation with Wiley-Blackwell,
and which other publishers is Jisc hoping to reach agreement with over offsetting?
RS: Jisc Collections is negotiating with
all journal publishers of hybrid journals on the Total Cost of Ownership. By
this we mean the combined cost to UK Higher Education Institutions of journals
subscriptions (the cost of consumption) and the cost of article processing
charges — APCs (the cost of open access publishing).
To
reduce this combined cost, Jisc Collections has negotiated with a number of publishers,
including Taylor & Francis, for the introduction of offset systems. These
systems recognise the additional burden of the combined costs, and offset one
against the other.
We
are very pleased to have reached a conclusion on an offset system to mitigate
the Total Cost of Ownership with Taylor & Francis and some of the other
major publishers of hybrid journals.
RP: I am wondering how these deals relate
to the regular round of (Big Deal) subscription agreements that Jisc negotiates
on behalf of the UK research community. I believe, for instance, that Jisc reached
three-year agreements
with both Wiley-Blackwell and Elsevier last year.
RS: They relate because we deal with the Total Cost of
Ownership — the cost to consume and the cost of open access publication. We do
not look at either of these costs in isolation.
We have agreed a three-year licence agreement with Wiley for 2015-17, and are in the middle of a 5-year agreement with Elsevier running 2012-16.
RP: I am not sure what the situation is
with regard to Taylor & Francis over the Big Deal, but where do these
offsetting agreements fit with the Big Deal cycle: are they in addition to the
Big Deals, or some kind of addendum to them? For instance, there seems to be a
component of access to subscription journals in the recent T&F deal, suggesting
that this might be a Big Deal+. Is that right?
RS: We do not negotiate the Big Deals in isolation — we look at the Total Cost of Ownership (see above).
RP: Just to clarify: my understanding
was that a Big Deal was agreed with Wiley-Blackwell last year. What I take to
be a separate offsetting agreement was finalised with the publisher a month or
so ago. So presumably the latter is some form of addendum to the former? And
would I be right to conclude that the deal recently agreed with Taylor &
Francis was in fact the regular Big Deal, and so perhaps the first Big Deal to
include an offsetting arrangement? Or am I misunderstanding?
RS: No, our previous agreement with Wiley runs from 2012 until
the end of this year, and the new agreement will run from 2015-17. Our Taylor
& Francis agreements reflect the same timeframes. The new Wiley and T&F
agreements both incorporate an OA offsetting component.
Not about double dipping
RP: Can you say how exactly how the
offsetting agreement with Taylor & Francis works? Since it is designed to
avoid “double dipping” I assume it only applies to hybrid journals, but the
T&F press release describes it in terms of “discounted Article Publishing
Charges via a voucher system”. Do I assume from this that no money will come
back to HEIs, and no money discount will apply, just the opportunity for
researchers at the HEI concerned to publish in hybrid (and perhaps gold?) journals
at a discounted price?
RS: This is not about “double dipping” — it is about the Total Cost
of Ownership for UK HEIs. Publishers such as Taylor & Francis have worked
with us to introduce an offset system that we believe will significantly reduce
the Total Cost of Ownership. An offset system, by its nature, means that the
cost of one is offset against the other — so if a system is successful in
reducing the costs, there is no need to move money because the cost is reduced.
RP: Can you tell me what the formula is
for calculating the discount and the number of vouchers that are offered for
what?
RS: It’s the institution’s expenditure divided by a given
amount (roughly average APC price) = number of vouchers for discounted APCs.
RP: You will know that there have been
widespread calls over the past year or so for much greater transparency over
the contracts that are negotiated between research institutions and publishers —
including from the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, which recommended “that
non-disclosure clauses should not be included in publishing contracts which
involve public funds.” As I understand it, the only publisher that still insists on non-disclosure is Elsevier. Yet in October Jisc CEO Lorraine Estelle
told Research that she could not reveal the offsetting
formulas used in the agreements with Taylor & Francis and Wiley-Blackwell.
I am not sure that your answer above is much more informative (what, for
instance, is the average APC, and how is it calculated?). Do you not think that
both Jisc and publishers should routinely put into the public domain the
details of the agreements they reach, including exactly how any offsetting
arrangement works? Or are there valid reasons for maintaining secrecy that
critics do not appreciate?
RS: There is a distinction between (legal) non-disclosure and
commercial sensitivity. Publisher A would usually prefer Publisher B not to
have ready access to the fine detail of its agreement with Jisc Collections;
indeed the prospect of this happening might put an unnecessary obstacle in the
path of a publisher’s willingness to enter into an agreement with us. The
information is routinely available in the community domain to the extent that
we inform every Jisc Collections member of the detail of each agreement.
It should be noted at the time of
speaking with Lorraine Estelle the formulas for the offset systems had not been
agreed with the publishers, and our community was still being consulted about
them. It would therefore have been premature to announce them in any detail to
anyone at that stage.
Tangible reduction
RP: You will also know that there is
some scepticism about the ability of offsetting arrangements to mitigate double
dipping. How confident are you that the deals Jisc is agreeing will entirely
remove the possibility of any double payment?
RS: Each of the offset arrangements we have agreed have
different facets. This is because the disciplinary focus of the journals and
administration workflows in each publishing house is different. However, this
also provides an opportunity to monitor and evaluate the offset systems in
place.
We will be collecting and analysing
data on an ongoing basis to measure the impact of these systems in reducing the
Total Cost of Ownership to UK universities. We are confident that the schemes
in place will result in tangible reductions of what would otherwise have been
the costs.
However, these schemes are new, so we have to rigorously test them and amend them if necessary.
However, these schemes are new, so we have to rigorously test them and amend them if necessary.
RP: Is the “substitutions allowance”
mentioned in the T&F press release essentially the voucher system by
another name, or something else?
RS: This is a standard system operated by the majority of
journal publishers in the case of agreements for which institutions are
required to maintain ‘core subscriptions’. Archival rights are typically applied
only to core subscriptions. However, institutions are able to substitute
subscriptions to certain journal titles for other titles of the same value.
This means that institutions can change their core subscriptions according to changes
in research interests.
RP: And what are the “improved
subscriptions reinstatement conditions” referred to in the T&F press
release?
RS: These conditions are to make the “Big Deal” (a complete
collection of journal titles) more affordable to those institutions that
currently subscribe not to a complete collection, but on a title-by-title
basis.
RP: The press release also says that
T&F access fees are now entirely “Jisc-banded”. What does that mean?
RS: Jisc banding is
the method Jisc has developed for differentiated pricing. It uses as its metric
the total income (research and teaching) of each HEI. Thus, institutions that
have less income pay less for the same level of access to digital resources.
Opting in
RP: I am assuming that the way Jisc works
is that it negotiates deals with publishers, and then HEIs opt in or not as
they wish. If that is right, what percentage of eligible HEIs do you expect to
sign up to the offsetting deals that Jisc is negotiating?
RS: Yes. Jisc Collections negotiates the deals and the licence terms.
HEIs may opt in if they wish to do so. We envisage that most HEIs will opt in
to those agreements that provide content which matches their research and
teaching requirements.
RP: What are Jisc’s objectives in
negotiating offsetting arrangements: simply to avoid “double dipping” or are
there other aims too?
RS: The chief objective is to reduce the Total Cost of
Ownership for UK HEIs. If well-designed and implemented, we envisage that
offset systems could also reduce the cost of administration for APC payments.
RP: As I understand it, the aim of what
you call Total Cost of Ownership is to avoid publishers being paid twice for
the same article, once by means of subscription charges and once by means of an
article-processing charge. You will know that the term double dipping is widely used
to express the same thing. Can you say why you resist the term double dipping?
RS: Our focus is on the Total Cost of Ownership, because
publishers adjust for double dipping at a global level by reducing the list
price of their journals. This by no means addresses the situation faced by UK
universities implementing OA policies with preferences for Gold open access.
Without offset systems in place, UK
universities would in some cases see their expenditure with the same publishers
more than double as they pay for both subscriptions and publication.
We need solutions that can be
implemented quickly, and that are designed to deal specifically with the issue
facing UK universities — an increase in the Total Cost of Ownership. Stephen
Pinfield has introduced a perhaps more helpful term — Total Cost of Publication
(but talking about the same issue); his article is an interesting read and is
available here.
Managing a transition
RP: I assume these offsetting deals are
a necessary part of the process of managing a transition to open access. How
long do you expect that transition to take, and will it ever be complete in
your view? If it is never complete, what in your view will be the implications for
the future with regard to the costs of scholarly publishing, and the
negotiation of Big Deals?
RS: Open Access is already bringing significant benefits to
research and the wider economy and society, which is why funders of research in
the UK, EU and elsewhere have put in place policies to encourage or require
researchers to make their research OA.
However, the policy environment is
complicated and uneven across the globe. It is difficult to say how long it
will take. However, during the transition period, it is essential that library
consortia such as Jisc Collections look at the Total Cost of Ownership and
negotiate the best outcomes for their member libraries.
RP: How challenging are these kind of
negotiations when it comes to reaching agreement with publishers, and what do
you feel to be the main sensitivities for publishers when trying to reach agreement?
RS: All negotiations are challenging by their very nature.
Publishers naturally wish to grow their businesses and increase revenues and
libraries naturally wish to reduce the very high cost of scholarly publishing.
Publishers have shown initial concern about offset systems and this is
understandable given that the concept is a new one — a concept designed by Jisc
Collections.
However, our negotiations are evidence-based
and informed by the data we collect and analyse, so we see an increasing number
of major publishers willing to introduce offset systems for their hybrid
journals.
RP: The Association of Universities in
the Netherlands (VSNU) seems to be taking a different approach
to transitioning to open access — notably through the deal they have done with
Springer (a model that Elsevier seems to have rejected).
What would you say were the pros and cons of these two different ways of
transitioning to OA: the Jisc approach and the VSNU approach?
RS:
Open Access is already bringing
significant benefits to research and the wider economy and we support its
implementation. Every country needs to contain the cost of scholarly publishing
while providing the widest possible access — both to those in academic
institutions and to society more generally.
Approaches may sometimes differ, but there
is great commonality across all the countries we talk to on this issue.
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