Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: a Review of Approaches and Experiences
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Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: A Review of Approaches and Experiences The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Solomon, David J., Mikael Laakso, and Bo-Christer Björk (authors). Peter Suber (editor). 2016. Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: A Review of Approaches and Experiences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:27803834 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Converting Scholarly Journals to Open Access: A Review of Approaches and Experiences By David J. Solomon, Mikael Laakso, and Bo-Christer Björk With interpolated comments from the public and a panel of experts Edited by Peter Suber Published by the Harvard Library August 2016 This entire report, including the main text by David Solomon, Bo-Christer Björk, and Mikael Laakso, the preface by Peter Suber, and the comments by multiple authors is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 1 Preface Subscription journals have been converting or “flipping” to open access (OA) for about as long as OA has been an option. For just as long, OA proponents have been writing arguments on why to flip, recommendations on how to flip, and case studies on individual cases of flipping. But until now, no systematic study has reviewed the literature on journal flipping or distinguished the different pathways, methods, or scenarios for journal flipping. This report owes its origin to a generous grant from the Arcadia Fund to the Harvard Library, and permission from Sarah Thomas, Vice President for the Harvard Library, to spend some of it on this project. I welcome the chance to thank Arcadia and Sarah Thomas for making this work possible. I wrote a request for proposals to start the project, and posted it in March 2015. After reviewing proposals from many qualified individuals and teams, I awarded the contract to David Solomon, Mikael Laakso, and Bo-Christer Björk. From the heart of the RFP: The literature review will focus on how journals have converted or might convert to OA, not on why. It will focus on converting non-OA journals, not launching new OA journals. As far as possible, it should identify evidence on the consequences of conversion, e.g. for submissions, readership, quality, impact, and finances. It should identify pathways already taken by converted journals and pathways proposed but not yet tried. A year later, in March 2016, David, Bo-Christer, and Mikael finished a preliminary draft, which we posted online for a four month public-comment period. Again, from the RFP: The purpose of the public comments is to supplement the literature review, make it more complete, more detailed, and more useful. For example, the public comments might add readings omitted from the literature review, extract new recommendations from readings already covered, suggest new clarity or detail for recommendations already formulated, and add notes to help readers consider the merits of the recommendations. 2 During the year in which the authors conducted their research and wrote it up, I recruited a panel of 20 experts to join the public in commenting on the final draft. The panel has broad experience, including OA and non-OA journal publishing, fee-based and no-fee OA publishing, for-profit and non-profit OA publishing, society and non-society OA publishing, OA publishing in the sciences and the humanities, OA publishing in the global north and the global south, and converting non-OA journals to OA. I asked the panelists draw upon their experience to endorse the scenarios they found worth endorsing, and advise against the ones they found inadvisable. If a given strategy had some advantages or disadvantages for a certain scholarly niche, when the report didn’t already point them out, I hoped that the panelists could point them out. If the report already pointed out some advantages or disadvantages, but the panelists could elaborate, I hoped they would elaborate. Which scenarios did they wish to encourage, or discourage, and in which scholarly niches? The version we publish today includes selected public comments, all the panelist comments, the full text from David, Mikael, and Bo-Christer’s report, and their final edits. Their final edits take into account the comments and their own second thoughts. The authors’ text is in black. Comments from the public and panelists are in gray, indented, and in a slightly smaller font. The literature review plus the comments from the public and panel make this a uniquely comprehensive and useful picture of the options and best practices for converting subscription- based scholarly journals to open access. Even without the commentary, it’s a thorough study of the question, and the first of its kind. But it’s also annotated by a wide range of informed commentators. It often reads like a conversation. David, Mikael, and Bo-Christer distinguish 15 different journal-flipping scenarios: 10 that depend on article processing charges (APCs) and 5 that dispense with APCs. They give examples, evidence, and their own analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each. In the process, they correct a large number of myths and misunderstandings. For example, some stakeholders believe that the only economically viable way to flip a journal to OA is to levy APCs. The report shows that this is false. Some believe that flipping a journal must result in lower revenue, lower citation impact, or lower quality. The report shows that this is false. Some 3 believe that journal-flipping is only realistic for journals in certain fields, or in certain affluent regions of the world. The report shows that this is false. Why focus this study on flipping subscription journals to OA rather than launching new OA journals? There are three reasons. First, there are already a good number of guides and recommendations on methods for launching new OA journals. But until now there has been nothing comparable on the side of converting subscription journals to OA. Second, without question, new OA journals advance the primary goal of providing OA to more and more research. But they don’t save libraries money, an important secondary goal. They don’t save libraries money unless they justify the cancellation of existing subscription journals. But because different journals publish different articles, journals are not fungible, and free journals do not directly displace priced journals, or justify their cancellation, even when they exist in the same field and at the same level of quality. By contrast, every converted OA journal removes a subscription line from the budget of every subscribing library, without removing access to the journal’s research. This frees up money for other good purposes, including the growth and sustainability of OA itself. It helps solve the inescapable background problem that the money needed to support high-quality OA in every field is largely tied up in subscriptions to conventional, non-OA journals. The alternative is to find significant new money for OA, which is as unlikely as it is unnecessary. Third, new journals start from scratch, while converted journals bring their readership, authors, editors, referees, quality, standards, and reputations with them. This matters because all new journals – OA and non-OA alike – start with a credibility problem aggravated by a vicious circle. They need a good reputation in order to attract good submissions, and they need good submissions in order to build a good reputation. Many born-OA journals have broken this vicious circle through high quality, hard work, and persistence, just as many other high-quality born-OA journals have failed to break it. But converted-OA journals bypass the vicious circle and don’t need to break it. Their credibility is continuous and uninterrupted. Conversion brings uncommon benefits that make it desirable even in fields where there is no shortage of high- quality, born-OA journals. Why focus on the full range of conversion scenarios rather than pick a favorite? 4 The full range is worth laying out simply because these scenarios have all been tried or proposed, but not yet systematically collected for analysis and consideration. Doing this groundwork is perfectly compatible with picking a favorite. Indeed, it’s a wise prerequisite to doing so. The same groundwork also allows different publishers to pick different favorites, or to pick models that best fit their circumstances, even if those models would make a poor fit for other publishers in different circumstances. More importantly, truncating or oversimplifying the range of options causes harm. For example, as noted, many stakeholders believe that there’s only one business model for OA journals, namely, charging APCs. This assumption has never been true and has never even been close. (Every measurement for more than a decade has shown that roughly three-quarters of OA journals charge no author-side fees at all, and in fact, that roughly three-quarters of subscription journals charge author-side fees on top of their reader-side fees.) The false assumption that all OA journals charge APCs stultifies the debate by limiting discussion to the one best-known option. It also stultifies the deliberations of publishers who believe, perhaps correctly, that the best-known option won’t work for them, and therefore conclude, prematurely, that no model will work for them. If a publisher has reasons to consider a move to OA, but only knows about APC-based OA journals, or OA journals in the sciences, or low-quality OA journals, it needs to appreciate this diversity in order to make an informed decision.