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Cost and Price Models of Scholarly E-Journals

Carol Tenopir

University of Tennessee

ctenopir@utk.edu

2

What Does it Cost?The Hype

• “Publish for free on the Internet”

• “Everything’s digitized…[so] everyone here can get published”

• “Web self-publishing … [is] poised to push old-school publishing giants aside”

3

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

Vendo

r

Publishe

r

Editor

4

What Does it Cost? The Reality

1. Article Processing

2. Non-article processing

3. Journal Reproduction

4. Distribution

5. Publishing Support

5

Number of Subscribers

Cost/print subscription

E-savings

500

5,000

10,000

50,000

$993

$140

$93

$55

11%

37%

52%

84%

The minimum price necessary to recover costs at various levels of circulation

67

Comparison of Yearly Journal Costs (4800 Subscriptions)

1975

1995

2002

Total Costs Cost/Subscription

$ 340,567 $ 70.95

$ 559,535 $ 116.44

$ 692,154 $ 144.20

7

Decreases in Personal Subscriptions

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

1977 1978-1983

1984 1985-1989

1990-1993

1994-1998

2000-2003

Years of Observation

8

Why Have Costs Increased?

1) Increase in Articles, Issues, “Pages”

2) Start-up E-system costs

3) Higher labor costs

4) Living in a dual-mode publishing world

5) Publishers’ overhead/market forces

9

0

50

100

150

200

250

1975 1995 2002

ManuscriptsSubmitted

Articles

Issues

Journal Characteristics

10

0

450

900

1350

1800

2250

1975 1995 2002

SpecialGraphics

Article Pages

Total Pages

Journal Characteristics

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Alternative Cost Models

• Reduce publishers’ “value add”

• Reduce publishers’ overhead

• Institutional/individual contributions

What are the prices?

13

Increase in Expenditures

14

Average Price Per Title:Science Journals 1996-2002

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002

U.S.Non-U.S.

Sources: Library Journal, April 15, 2000, and April 15, 2002.

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Serial & Monograph Expenditures

$0.00$500,000.00

$1,000,000.00$1,500,000.00$2,000,000.00$2,500,000.00$3,000,000.00$3,500,000.00$4,000,000.00$4,500,000.00

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

SerialMonograph

Source: Monograph and Serial Costs in ARL Libraries. http://www.arl.org/newsltr/210/coststbl.html. Accessed September 30, 2002.

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Scholarly Publishing at the Crossroads

SPARCSociety Publishers

Commercial Publishers

Bio

Med

Cen

tral

Inst

itutio

nal R

epos

itorie

s

E-Print Service

Self-Archives

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Is a Subscription Model Obsolete?

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Alternative Price Models (Open Access)

• Pay to publish (Author pays)

• Institutional repositories

• Volunteers/good will/self archiving

19

Who Pays

• Authors

• Universities

• Another not-for-profit body

• Advertisers

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Three Main Options

1. With Traditional Publishers in traditional ways

2. New Relationship with Publishers

3. Without Traditional Publishers

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New Relationships

• SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Researches Coalition)

• BioMed Central

• Public Library of Science

22

Without Traditional Publishers

• Institutional Repositories (“University Archiving”)

• Self-Archiving

• E-Print Service (e.g., arXiv.org)

23

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

Vendo

r

Publishe

r

Editor

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Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

Vendo

r

Publishe

r

Editor

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Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

Vendo

r

Publishe

r

26

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

Vendo

r

27

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

Indexer

28

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

Consorti

a

29

Publishing Chain

Reader

AuthorLibrary

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Publishing Chain

Reader

Author

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What is Needed?

• Commitment• Assurance of quality• Assurance of accessibility• Adherence to standards• Longevity

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• Electronic publishing doesn’t drastically reduce costs

• Intellectual costs are highest

• Must work together

• Multiple co-existing alternatives