[Eril-l] [EXT] APCs for paywalled articles?

Mon Mar 15 14:03:02 PDT 2021

Trying to tred carefully here because I’m trying to just describe, without getting into pros and cons.  In the print world, publishers relied on many revenue sources — subscriptions (institutional and personal), page charges, advertising, sale of reprints, subventions from a sponsoring organization, etc.  Depending on the publisher, the mix varies considerably.  In the digital world, what the publisher has to pay for has changed, but I think the notion that many had early in the digital era that somehow online publishing would necessarily be cheaper has been disproven.  The money still needs to come from somewhere.

Having spent much of the last twenty years of my career in the thick of these issues it has been my observation that librarians overestimate the contribution that subscription/licensing revenue makes to the overall mix.  In the print world, page charges provided a clear and equitable way to make authors share some of the cost, and it was the philosophy of many societies that it was reasonable to expect authors to pay a share in order to keep subscription prices down.  But not printing pages (although most publishers, particularly those with audiences in developing countries, still do quite a bit of printing) doesn’t eliminate overall costs — the investments that publishers have had to make in order to publish online are considerable.  Advertising revenue is down across the board and with OA publishing, the sale of reprints has been cut substantially.  Most society publishers have pretty thin margins and are quite aware that library budgets are strapped.  So they are scrambling to figure out how to continue publishing.

It’s not double-charging.  It’s trying to figure out how to spread the costs over multiple sources.

Scott

T Scott Plutchak
Librarian
Epistemologist
Birmingham, Alabama
splutchak at gmail.com <mailto:splutchak at gmail.com>
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233 <https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233>
http://tscott.typepad.com <http://tscott.typepad.com/>

> On Mar 15, 2021, at 3:00 PM, Crawford, Laurel <Laurel.Crawford at unt.edu> wrote:
> 
> Thanks, Scott.
>  
> My impression was that page charges were somewhat defensible if the publication was in print format: am I off-base? Doesn’t the justification evaporate when we’re thinking of online publications?
>  
> In any case, some of the fees I found are framed as page charges, while others are just a fee. If the fee is to support the publisher’s services (editing, distribution, etc.) what are the library’s subscription charges supporting? This still seems like double-charging to me, and it seems exploitative, since they know many researchers will scrape together the money, because the risk of remaining unpublished is too high.
>  
> Laurel Sammonds Crawford, MLIS
> Head of Collection Development
> University of North Texas Libraries
> laurel.crawford at unt.edu <mailto:laurel.crawford at unt.edu>
>  
> <image001.jpg>
>  
> Pronouns <https://ied.unt.edu/pronouns>: she, her, and hers
>  
> From: T Scott Plutchak <splutchak at gmail.com <mailto:splutchak at gmail.com>> 
> Sent: Monday, March 15, 2021 12:47 PM
> To: Crawford, Laurel <Laurel.Crawford at unt.edu <mailto:Laurel.Crawford at unt.edu>>
> Cc: eril-l at lists.eril-l.org <mailto:eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
> Subject: [EXT] Re: [Eril-l] APCs for paywalled articles?
>  
> Page charges in society journals have a very long history, predating online journals.  I’m not defending current practices, just pointing out that requiring authors to partially subsidize publication has been going on for a very long time.  When commercial publishers started to move into the scientific publishing arena many decades ago, one of their inducements to authors was that they didn’t have page charges.  They made up for it, of course, by having higher subscription fees.
>  
> Scott
>  
> T Scott Plutchak
> Librarian
> Epistemologist
> Birmingham, Alabama
> splutchak at gmail.com <mailto:splutchak at gmail.com>
> https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233 <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Forcid.org%2F0000-0003-4712-5233&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995831483%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=S700a81CtZVE6hA9bbIANgfzlcvb8%2FMO3AWqmK4TLIM%3D&reserved=0>
> http://tscott.typepad.com <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Ftscott.typepad.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995841481%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=LVQbj7YvkihxsinSe0LBLZSUOdPhlK5tyEPxDIVfiTo%3D&reserved=0>
> 
> 
> On Mar 15, 2021, at 12:04 PM, Crawford, Laurel <Laurel.Crawford at unt.edu <mailto:Laurel.Crawford at unt.edu>> wrote:
>  
> Hi everyone,
>  
> We’re all familiar with APCs for OA articles. I have encountered a situation I haven’t run into before: some journals are requiring authors to pay a fee to publish non-OA articles.
>  
> The examples we’ve found so far are all society journals in STEM fields. Some of them are published by one of the major publishers.
> Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fesajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fhub%2Fjournal%2F15409309%2Fresources%2Fauthor-guidelines-FEE&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995841481%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=WGNh4vAW4vyX4XsZ2cRhr3tbYHSVk%2FjBOSxgdnXkHHA%3D&reserved=0>, Ecology Society of America
> All publications from ESA - see Table 3 <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fesajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2Ffull%2F10.1002%2Fbes2.1594&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995851475%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=PMZdzH4bAwLDkD0jJZ6DHhBiebnbgvO5DeE0U1CiI0I%3D&reserved=0> of this article
> Plant Physiology <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpphys.msubmit.net%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmain.plex%3Fform_type%3Ddisplay_auth_instructions&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995861468%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=2Cl1jGiWCZCE1Y4BzhpmwA6Nh2wMkhisi3fWPgQyGVo%3D&reserved=0>, American Society of Plant Biologists - see section, Fees and Charges. 
> ASPB's journal, The Plant Cell <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftpc.msubmit.net%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmain.plex%3Fform_type%3Ddisplay_auth_instructions&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995861468%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=6eZCxzpoZl7CGGa9603Mtu1fmtyNJpbEAwS7fOsiKLg%3D&reserved=0>, also has charges for non-open access. See Policies and Fees.
> AGU journals https://www.agu.org/Publish-with-AGU/Publish/Author-Resources/Publication-fees <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.agu.org%2FPublish-with-AGU%2FPublish%2FAuthor-Resources%2FPublication-fees&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995871468%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=SYlU1XFKLnTqmiqHDyDuVmnYfc0cfbNcZ91STN2k7gY%3D&reserved=0>
>  
> What’s bothering me about this is threefold:
> Our authors might be paying these fees and then the library might also be paying for a subscription. 
> Large publisher conglomerates do not need “help making these subscriptions affordable” (as one of the above publishers claims). The library is already paying—collectively—a huge amount of money to provide access to these articles.
> Not all of them seem to be up-front about the fee structure. I spoke to at least one researcher who had passed through the acceptance and copy-edit stages before realizing a large fee was required for paywalled publication. We believe not disclosing that information on their website or submission guidelines is unethical according to the COPE guidelines on transparency <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpublicationethics.org%2Fresources%2Fguidelines-new%2Fprinciples-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995871468%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=Ak3lggG3XgvsWxsyBf7ktJ76fKG8DcFo%2B94CqMGYAZs%3D&reserved=0>. 
>  
> Have others encountered this situation? Have you addressed it with the publisher? I am curious about the rationale for this, faculty attitudes toward this type of fee, and what, if anything, you believe libraries can do to advocate for authors.
>  
> Thanks in advance!
>  
> Laurel Sammonds Crawford, MLIS
> Head of Collection Development
> University of North Texas Libraries
> laurel.crawford at unt.edu <mailto:laurel.crawford at unt.edu>
>  
> <image001.jpg>
>  
> Pronouns <https://ied.unt.edu/pronouns>: she, her, and hers
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Eril-l mailing list
> Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org <mailto:Eril-l at lists.eril-l.org>
> http://lists.eril-l.org/listinfo.cgi/eril-l-eril-l.org <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.eril-l.org%2Flistinfo.cgi%2Feril-l-eril-l.org&data=04%7C01%7CLaurel.Crawford%40unt.edu%7Cf306bb7d02b54abe417008d8e7da4808%7C70de199207c6480fa318a1afcba03983%7C0%7C0%7C637514271995881456%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=sTONPy3vWzbBDBVQGuZvirFxspMkpAP87KASals93IU%3D&reserved=0>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.eril-l.org/pipermail/eril-l-eril-l.org/attachments/20210315/5191b1b3/attachment.html>