Open access: A publisher’s experience of handling APCs

Mark PurvisOpen Access Publisher

November 2015

● Introducing IOP Publishing ● APCs in gold open access journals● APCs in hybrid journals and offsetting pilots● What have we learned?

Overview

● Leading scientific learned society promoting physics and physicists

● Worldwide membership is more than 50,000 people

● Mission is to advance physics research, application and education

● www.iop.org

● provides high-quality publishing services to the global scientific community

● publishes a range of journals, ebooks, magazines, conference proceedings and websites

● ioppublishing.org

Institute of Physics:

IOP Publishing:

IOP Publishing in numbers

75Journals &Magazines

Articlesper year

30,000

27International

publishing partners

4

eBook series

Full-text downloads

29mstaff in 16locations

>300

Partnerjournals40

IOP Publishing is committed to providing long term, sustainable access to quality scientific research for everyone, whilst maintaining high

value, trustworthy author and reader services which enhance scientific communication and progress

● Four full open access journals in portfolio of 70● New Journal of Physics launched in 1998 in partnership with

DPG; leading open access journal in general physics ● Environmental Research Letters, the top-ranked open access

journal in its field● Two more fully open access journals published for partners

● Three fully open access Conference Proceedings journals (encompasses 15% of published content)

● Nearly 40 ‘hybrid’ journals, publishing individual papers on an open access basis within subscription-based journals

● Self archiving allowed on all journals after 12 month embargo

Offering choice for researchers

APCs on simple gold OA journals

• Simple model• One article = one APC• Send the author an invoice when the

article is published

Discounts and disambiguation

APCs on simple gold OA journals … getting more complicated

• Multiple authors – need to be able to split fees between authors • Referee discounts – reward referees with a 10% fee reduction per review• Discounts for members of the parent societies DPG and IOP• Max Planck Society pays for OA publishing at its Institutes• Goettingen University pays centrally for its researchers• Chinese Academy of Sciences pays half the APC for researchers at its

institutes• Associate member societies get 5% discount• Discretionary waivers and charitable support for developing countries• Discounts can be additive, e.g. referee + member of DPG = 10% + 25%

How do we administer this?

• First step is to ask the authors to indicate which schemes they might qualify for

• At the same time we have to identify individuals, institutions and funders• Each scheme has its own rules, e.g. Max Planck pays for corresponding or last

author, Goettingen pays for corresponding or first author• Even more complicated when research takes scientists away from their home

institution.• For example, researchers from all round the globe collaborate at CERN when

using their experimental facilities. CERN has an open access policy but can’t afford to pay for the APCs of every paper of every scientist who has ever worked there.

• Official policy doesn’t necessarily equate to a precise rule set we can use in an automated financial system.

• Publishers and institutions have to agree specific rules – which is time-consuming and complicated – and communicate those clearly to authors

What else changes the APC?

• VAT• Currency exchange• Price changes• Length of article • e.g. Optics Express – APC for up to 6 pages $1,080 – APC for 7 – 14 pages $1,849 – Additional per page charge over 14 pages $145

• Share of APC between authors• Great initiative from JISC Data Collections team to capture information on

APCs from UK institutions and make it widely available via Figshare• Look at these data and you see an unexpected variety in the actual APCs

paid for all the reasons above

Managing the data

• Challenge for publishers is to collect all the data at a granular level – why?– We need to collect the money– We need to feedback to our customers – some are pre-paying and need to know when

the purse is empty; others need to plan for future budgets– We need to share information with our publishing partners– We need to plan our business

• Simplest approach is to use manual spreadsheets• It places an additional burden on the publishing admin teams who process

articles through our editorial peer review and production systems but it works on a small scale

• However, the scale is changing …

Offsetting and hybrid – the new dawn in open access

● Hybrid OA offers authors the choice for immediate open access in subscription journals in return for paying an APC

● IOPP is committed that it won’t make anyone pay twice (double dipping)

● APC payments for hybrid open access articles are offset against both local subscription costs and global subscription prices

● Sliding scale determines the level of local and global offsets●At low levels of hybrid, bulk of offset is local●As levels of hybrid increase, local offset reduces and global

offset increases● All hybrid APC income outside offsetting pilots (including SCOAP3)

is offset against global subscription prices

Hybrid OA and offsetting pilots

Open access: IOP pilots

• UK offsetting pilot: 22 UK Universities, responsible for 75% of papers published by UK authors in our subscription journals in 2014, are taking part in a three year pilot to offset article publication charges against subscription fees

• FWF Pilot: Collaboration between the Austrian Science Fund, The Austrian Academic Consortium, the Austrian Central Library for Physics at the University of Vienna and IOP Publishing, three year pilot, started in January 2014

• SCOAP3 Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics: Convert all high energy physics publishing to OA. Redirect subscription funds to pay the article publication charges. CERN provides central organisation to coordinate the project

Offsetting: what have we learned about APCs?

● One size does not fit all:● Different models to meet needs of different

funders/authors/institutions● Mixed economy for years to come but the best solutions will be those

which involve full dialogue between customers and publishers and which learn from these experiments

● Complex transition:● Systems for existing, subscription-based, business models have

evolved over many years ● These are being adapted but in the short term this means more

administration● Different countries, subjects, institutions, authors are moving at

different paces

What is changing for IOP Publishing?

● Open access is shifting from a minor part to a major part of our business

• New financial tracking and reporting systems are being developed using ERP software

• We have adapted our manuscript handling systems to collect data and interact with the ERP system

● Staff and authors have to get used to new processes and initiatives● More time spent talking to funders, librarians and policy makers to

find the best solutions● Adapting to new business models, different cash flows and,

potentially, increased risk of bad debt

What else needs to happen?

● Better information for researchers● More standardization = greater efficiency● Use cross-industry infrastructure like FundRef and ORCID● Learn from the pilots● Continued collaboration between all the stakeholders

Thank you for your attentionAny questions?

mark.purvis@iop.org