U of California-Springer deal breaks new ground in academic-publishing model

[Hibush]

The University of California has reached a subscription deal with Springer-Nature that takes into account the big changes in the world or research publishing.

UC has been playing hardball with Elsevier and Springer in the latest negotiations, and taking advantage of other big groups saying no to the Big Deal that keeps going up in price too fast, and of the open-access movement.

The deal allows all UC authors to publish open-access in the journals, and UC faculty, staff and students to read all of the journals. That really provides what the UC research establishment needs.

But how do they pay for the article processing fees that make open-access possible? That has been a huge sticking point in every negotiation, with great differences among academic fields.

This model has the university (library budget) picking up the first $1,000 of the APC, and you pay the rest from your grant. In many fields of science, that is a good deal because almost every granting agency requires OA publishing now, and will expect the APC to be part of the budget. And if you want your research read, why prevent people from reading it by paywalling it?

The tougher side has been for research fields that are not generally funded by research grants. Could journals in those fields be viable with a $1,000 APC? Then UC authors could publish there with no direct cost.

There is also a provision for non-funded research to get a university subsidy for higher APCs. I suspect that fund would get depleted in a hurry unless it has pretty tight rules.

I think other big research universities will be well served by this general framework. The total price has to be right though. At the moment, I don't think anyone knows how much we pay Springer in APCs plus subscription. Those budgets are managed completely separately. Active researchers are paying over ten-thousand a year in APCs, so they add up.

I am also curious how Elsevier will respond. They have been unwilling to negotiate (since forever), but now major groups are dropping their subscriptions. Authors and readers move fairly quickly to new journals if they are good, so there is real potential for venerable old Elsevier journals to be abandoned.

[Wahoo Redux]

Wikipedia (the source of all information) lists APCs as generally between $1200 to $4000+, although some are as low as $100.

I get that there and technology and personnel costs, but why are these fees so inflated?

Turning a manuscript into a PDF should be pretty cheap, and once the publishers have a platform they should only need to upload.  Are they paying for proofreaders?  Most of the proofers I've worked with are graduate students.  In the humanities, the readers and editors are usually free.

Certainly there are costs that are not apparent---I'm just wondering what they are.

[Hibush]

Wikipedia (the source of all information) lists APCs as generally between $1200 to $4000+, although some are as low as $100.

I get that there and technology and personnel costs, but why are these fees so inflated?

Turning a manuscript into a PDF should be pretty cheap, and once the publishers have a platform they should only need to upload.  Are they paying for proofreaders?  Most of the proofers I've worked with are graduate students.  In the humanities, the readers and editors are usually free.

Certainly there are costs that are not apparent---I'm just wondering what they are.

Turning a manuscript into a PDF is not what the publisher do. That is an automated step that the software performs. Pretending that academic publishing does not cost money is not going to address the problem of Springer and Elsevier using monopoly power to overcharge.

I wonder what would happen if financially strapped SLACs began to charge publishers for faculty time spent reviewing and editing for their journals. Those are the faculty who would have the greatest challenge paying APCs.

[Wahoo Redux]

Seems to answer my question by suggesting that JStore simply wants to make money.

[Vkw10]

Seems to answer my question by suggesting that JStore simply wants to make money.

The author isn't objective and hasn't done any research into the costs of academic publishing. The current model has major flaws, many related to perpetuating a journal system that developed for a 17th century print environment. Even if we started a completely new system for sharing research, there are some costs involved in managing a large collection of PDF articles so those articles are available for the next decade. Disciplinary archives that are free to use, still cost money to operate. See arXiv's financial sustainability plan at https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/arxivpub/2018-2022%3A+Sustainability+Plan+for+Classic+arXiv for an example. Costs could be much lower, but there would still be some costs unless we want research articles disappearing as individuals update websites.

[pigou]

I'm very confused by this deal. The UC system has 227,000 faculty. If each faculty publishes on average 1 paper per year at $1,000 APC, that implies a total cost of 227 million dollars.

From the article:

MacKie-Mason and Anderson said they were unable to share details on how much the agreement will cost the system annually. The UC system's current bundled journal subscription deal with Springer Nature costs millions of dollars per year. The new agreement is expected to save the system money overall, but the exact cost will depend on the number of articles UC researchers publish, said Anderson.

Really, the break-even point could be as low as one publication per 10 faculty per year. Are they just going to run out of money for "subsidized" publications?

It's obviously a way to shift costs from the university to grant agencies, but if I were Springer, I'd be really happy about this arrangement. If grant agencies start funding APCs, I'd start raising prices on all the journals. That way, we all get to live in the world of JAMA, with $3,000 APCs that get written into grants. At some point, funders might start to wonder what the 50% overhead pays for, though. Especially while we work from home...

[Hibush]

In the journals covered by Web of Science, UC authors publish a steady 65,000 articles a year. Currently about 45% are published open access.

[pigou]

In the journals covered by Web of Science, UC authors publish a steady 65,000 articles a year. Currently about 45% are published open access.

That's informative, thanks! This article says the UC has been spending $50m on journal subscriptions per year.

So there's a pretty decent chance that Springer will make more money with this deal, but that the UC may be able to shift more of the cost to grant agencies. In the process, researchers in the humanities and social sciences that don't generally depend on grant funding will have to start seeking out grants (or some of those savings evaporate).

What a waste of effort over what amounts to pocket change. The university budget is over $9bn.

[Wahoo Redux]

See arXiv's financial sustainability plan at https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/arxivpub/2018-2022%3A+Sustainability+Plan+for+Classic+arXiv for an example. Costs could be much lower, but there would still be some costs unless we want research articles disappearing as individuals update websites.

This is very interesting but a bit difficult to read.  It appears that running a database is more expensive than common sense dictates it should be.  I cannot help but notice that the Cornell database seems very reasonable to me, noting that they have a number of sponsors---

Tier

Previous Model Fee

Current Fee

Tier 1: 1–25

$3,000

$4,400

Tier 2: 26–50

$3,000

$3,800

Tier 3: 51–100

$2,500

$3,200

Tier 4: 101– 150

$2,000

$2,500

Tier 5: 151–200

$1,500

$1,800

Tier 6: 201+

$1,500

$1,000

But this is only a single, fairly limited database.

Perhaps if Elsevere, JStore, etc. could be more transparent with their costs they could justify their business models.

[Hibush]

The APC pricing structure seems to vary with author resources.  Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, to pick a Springer-Nature OA journal in the field, has an APC of $1060, which would be essentially covered by the institution rather than the  author.  As, Wahoo indicates, the APC in the Humanities are even lower.

[Parasaurolophus]

The APC pricing structure seems to vary with author resources.  Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, to pick a Springer-Nature OA journal in the field, has an APC of $1060, which would be essentially covered by the institution rather than the  author.  As, Wahoo indicates, the APC in the Humanities are even lower.

I just had a look, and for Springer journals in my field, it looks like the APCS are pretty much all $2750. And since there's almost no grant money around, I guess that means nobody in the UC system can publish in those journals any more. It's not a ton of journals, but it's two T10 generalist journals and a few top specialist journals (some of which are especially relevant to UC faculty, given the kind of work they tend to do there).

[Hibush]

The APC pricing structure seems to vary with author resources.  Humanities & Social Sciences Communications, to pick a Springer-Nature OA journal in the field, has an APC of $1060, which would be essentially covered by the institution rather than the  author.  As, Wahoo indicates, the APC in the Humanities are even lower.

I just had a look, and for Springer journals in my field, it looks like the APCS are pretty much all $2750. And since there's almost no grant money around, I guess that means nobody in the UC system can publish in those journals any more. It's not a ton of journals, but it's two T10 generalist journals and a few top specialist journals (some of which are especially relevant to UC faculty, given the kind of work they tend to do there).

That's too bad. What is the cost for some of the other T10 journals?

Since you don't have a granting agency requiring OA publication, you have the option of putting papers in a paywalled journal. What is the difference in impact if your do?