scholarly communication
Christine Fruin and Fred Rascoe
Funding open access journal
publishing
Article processing charges
he widely accepted definition of open for Science and Technology Policy requiring
Taccess (OA), as coined by scholar and federal agencies as is already mandated for
advocate Peter Suber, is that it is scholarly the National Institutes of Health to make
literature that is digital, online, free of charge, federally funded research available for public
and free of most copyright and licensing consumption. Accordingly, more authors will
restrictions. 1 To clarify, OA literature is free be exploring OA publishing opportunities
of charge to the reader, and there are two and possibly paying a fee to do so when
primary outlets that authors can use to deliver opting to publish in an OA journal.
free literature to readers. Authors can reserve Libraries traditionally have served readers
in their publication agreements the right to of scholarly literature by covering the cost
post their manuscripts in an OA repository of publishing through paid subscriptions. In
(commonly referred to as Green OA ) or order to support faculty authors who opt to
they can publish their works in an OA journal publish in OA journals that charge their au-
(commonly referred to as Gold OA. ) While thors, it is crucial for librarians to be aware of
the cost of the former method of access is free the various funding models being employed
for authors, with the costs of maintaining the by OA journals.
repositories absorbed by the host institutions An established business model adopted by
by using existing technological infrastructure OA publishers is assessing authors an article
and staff, the latter method of delivering OA processing charge (APC). Often, authors can
content still comes at a cost for the publish- rely upon research grants to cover APCs in
ers. That cost, however, is often passed on to order to comply with the grant requirements
authors rather than the traditional method of or as part of the implicit cost of research.
recouping costs through paid subscriptions. Authors without grants, or with grants but no
Although the Directory of Open Access
Journals reports that nearly two-thirds of
Christine Fruin is scholarly communications
OA journals listed there do not charge au-
l i brari an at Uni versi ty of Fl ori da, e-mai l :
thors,2 a recent study indicates that 50% of christine.ross@ufl.edu Fred Rascoe is scholarly
communications librarian at Georgia Institute of
OA articles have been published after the
Technology, e-mail: fred.rascoe@library.gatech.edu
author paid a fee.3 OA has been experienc-
ing a tremendous growth, as evidenced by Contact series editors Zach Coble, digital scholarship
specialist at New York University, and Adrian Ho, director
the increasing number of journals publishing
of digital scholarship at the University of Kentucky
wholly OA or offering it on an article-level
Libraries, at crlnscholcomm@gmail.com with article ideas
basis, more institutions adopting OA policies,
© 2014 Christine Fruin and Fred Rascoe, published under Creative
and a mandate from the White House s Office Commons CC-BY 4.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
C&RL News May 2014 240
reserved funding, may look to their univer- Another possible source for institutional
sity for assistance. Universities administering OA funds is the institution s research divi-
funds for OA publishing must grapple with sion. As the division charged with tracking
several questions about management and and managing grant funding, it has a vested
distribution of these funds. For publishers not interest in helping researchers and faculty
relying upon APCs to fund their operations, not only meet public access requirements but
business model experiments abound, such as also ensure coverage of publishing research
the PeerJ author membership model and the in OA journals. At some campuses, individual
SCOAP3 consortium model. The challenge for colleges or departments also contribute mon-
librarians is to not only educate themselves ies to institutional OA funds. Finally, monies
about these available business models and occasionally come from a central institu-
the pros and cons of each but also how to tional account or operating budget that is
use that knowledge to meaningfully impact administered by a provost or another senior
the field of scholarly communication. administrator.
Institutions secondly need to consider
Article processing charges what types of OA publishing will be sup-
With the expansion of a governmental ported. Will hybrid journals, which are
mandate requiring public access to federally publications in journals that charge subscrip-
funded research,4 an increase in the number tions but allow individual articles to be OA
of institutions mandating their employees to for a fee, be supported? Some institutions
make their works available in an OA reposi- have elected to support hybrid publishing
tory, and the evidence that the number of ar- at a reduced rate while others have chosen
ticles being published in OA journals charging not to support it at all. Additionally, institu-
APCs is growing,5 authors will increasingly be tions should consider whether to apply any
faced with the dilemma of how to cover the criteria of journal quality in determining
cost of publishing their work in OA journals eligibility. Will only journals listed in the Di-
that charge APCs. APCs range from $200 to rectory of Open Access Journals7 be eligible
$5,000, with $904 reported as the average for funding or will there be a narrower class
in the United States.6 Senior researchers and of eligible journals, such as only those not
faculty may be able to cover this cost by writ- included on Jeffrey Beall s List of Predatory
ing the fees into their grants. However, APCs Publishers?8
can be overwhelming for graduate students A third issue that institutions need to
or junior faculty without grant funding. To consider is who will be eligible for funding.
respond to this need, many institutions have This requires not only determining what in-
established OA publishing funds as a means stitutionally affiliated persons will be eligible
of covering some or all of the APC cost in- for support but also whether unaffiliated
curred by their faculty, staff, and students. coauthors will be eligible for support. Insti-
There are a variety of issues institutions tutions may elect to prorate publishing fund
must confront when establishing OA publishing awards based upon the number of affiliated
funds. First, what will be the source of funds? authors. That is, if there are three authors on
Libraries may elect to repurpose a portion of a paper, and only two of them are affiliated
their collections budgets for funding the pay- with the funding university, then funding
ment of APCs. Libraries may also have access reimbursement is two-thirds of the maximum
to discretionary funds within their budgets. allotment. A final issue that institutions may
However, because these monies are frequently want to consider is whether to impose award
non-recurring, use of discretionary funds may caps on a per-article and per-author basis.
be advised only in a pilot project so as to allow Imposing caps is a means to maximize the
libraries to gauge usage and need and help number of articles and authors that benefit
make a case for more permanent funding. from the funds.
May 2014 241 C&RL News
Institutions may also elect to assist with sciences. Review of submissions and publica-
APCs by purchasing an institutional member- tion decisions are conducted independent of
ship with OA publishers. Several major OA the business of the sponsoring funding agen-
publishers discount their APCs if an author is cies. Instead, independent academic reviewers
affiliated with an institution that has a mem- provide these services. While eLife publication
bership. Below is a chart with examples of funds are currently covered by the funding agen-
publishers offering APC discounts to authors cies, the journal may implement APCs as part
at member institutions: of a broader sustainability plan in the future.10
Publisher Membership Discount
Fee
BioMed Central Based on number of 15% on APC for affili-
researchers and gradu- ated authors
ate students at institu-
tion
Hindawi Flat rate calculated ac- APC waived for affili-
cording to the research ated authors during
output level of the in- period of institutional
stitute and its historical membership
publishing pattern in
Hindawi journals
Royal Society Publishing Flat annual fee 25% on APC for affili-
ated authors
Springer Open Access Flat annual fee based 15% on APC for affili-
on number of science ated authors
and medical research-
ers and graduate stu-
dents at institution
Emerging models for funding OA Some publishers are altering the standard
publishing APC business model in various ways while
Charging authors APCs is not the only business still maintaining quality and sustainability.
model employed by OA publishers. In recent One example of an altered model is the
years, some new models have emerged for author membership model, perhaps most
generating income to cover the costs of produc- prominently exemplified by the new journal
ing a journal. The journal eLife9 is an example PeerJ.11 Under the author membership
of funding agencies moving beyond support model, the author pays a fee to be a member
of existing journals and setting up their own of the journal, and that fee gives the member
OA publication. In 2011, three major research publishing privileges. In the case of PeerJ,
funders, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute there are levels of membership that allow
(United States), the Max Planck Society (Germa- for one, two, or unlimited publications per
ny), and the Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom), year, depending on the level of membership
announced that they would begin publication that is paid. Under this model, the fee for
of an OA journal featuring high-impact and membership is lower than many APCs, and,
peer-reviewed research in life and biomedical once paid, there is no further monetary cost
C&RL News May 2014 242
to publish. The only further obligation on the OA and the cost-free options available with
author is to commit to commenting on or peer many gold OA journals, they should also be
reviewing the submissions of other authors. cognizant of the frequency at which faculty
Another possible model is the consortial and researchers are publishing in gold OA
membership within a discipline. The most publications that charge a fee and the avail-
successful and well-known of this model is able options for covering those costs.
the SCOAP312 consortium in which most of
the major journals in a specific field (in this Notes
case, high-energy physics) participate in OA 1. Peter Suber, Open Access (Cambridge:
publishing. Under the terms of the SCOAP3 MIT Press, 2012), 4.
consortium agreement, the participating jour- 2. Directory of Open Access Journals, ac-
nals agreed to begin publishing all articles cessed January 14, 2014, www.doaj.org.
OA, and, in turn, all of the subscription costs 3. David J. Solomon and Bo-Christer Björk,
are prorated for consortial members. The A Study of Open Access Journals Using
authors bear no cost of the funding. Article Processing Charges, Journal of the
F1000 is a publishing company that will American Society of Information Sciences
publish submissions immediately for open (2012): 63, 1485 1495, accessed January 14,
peer review and revisioning. The online pub- 2014, doi:10.1002/asi.22673.
lication F1000 Research requires submitters 4. U.S. Office of Science and Technology
to pay an APC for publication, but for those Policy, Memorandum for the Heads of Ex-
who are members of F1000 or are participat- ecutive Departments and Agencies: Increas-
ing peer referees, a heavily discounted APC ing Access to Federally Funded Scientific
is charged upon publication. The incentive Research, February 22, 2013, www.white-
to cash-strapped authors, then, is to partici- house.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp
pate in a community hosted by a publishing /ostp_public_access_memo_2013.pdf.
entity in exchange for a reduced charge for 5. Solomon and Björk, Study of Open
OA publication.13 Access Journals, 1493.
Recently, the American Chemical Society 6. Ibid., 1492.
(ACS) introduced a model14 for OA whereby 7. Directory of Open Access Journals.
authors who publish articles in traditional toll- 8. Scholarly Open Access, accessed
access ACS titles receive credits for a future February 27, 2014, http://scholarlyoa.com
article to be published OA at no cost. This is a /publishers/. See also http://scholarlyoa.com
transitional strategy for ACS as they move toward /individual-journals/.
their own OA model for doing business. 9. eLife, accessed February 27, 2014,
http://www.elifesciences.org/
Conclusion 10. Frequently Asked Questions, eLife,
Libraries are viewed as the primary resource accessed February 27, 2014, http://www.
at academic institutions for information on elifesciences.org/about/frequently-asked-
scholarly publishing issues, including OA. questions/#7.
Faculty interest in OA publishing is increasing, 11. peerJ, accessed February 27, 2014,
and when recent federal mandates for OA are http://www.peerj.org.
implemented, the interest from those doing 12. SCOAP3, accessed February 27, 2014,
federally funded research will grow quickly. http://scoap3.org.
As such, librarians should be prepared to 13. F1000 Research: Referee Incentives,
answer questions from faculty and research- accessed March 17, 2014, http://f1000re-
ers on how they can cover the costs that are search.com/referee-incentives
often attendant to publishing in OA journals. 14. ACS Author Rewards , accessed
While librarians should advocate and educate March 18, 2014, http://acsopenaccess.org
their constituents on the availability of green /acs-author-rewards/.
May 2014 243 C&RL News
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