Q: What are the key insights that you have gained from your experimentations on publishing models and open access? Will the findings from these experimentations have any impact on your current business model? If yes, in what ways?
A: With our open access experiments, we set out to provide data for a robust analysis of the consequences of adopting open access business models. We’ve launched a number of different models, including full open access with Nucleic Acids Research, sponsored open access (Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine), and optional open access for 49 journals through Oxford Open. Three recent studies looking at the impact of open access on our authors, usage, and citations (see [our] report), have shown that immediate open access does seem to help increase usage, but also that the increase is not as high as may have been expected. In fact, there may be several factors driving up online usage, including the impact of search engines, so open access may be just a small factor. It’s still far too early to see the long term effects of open access on usage from these experiments, and much more data need to be collected. We will continue to report our findings in 2007.
We also published results from the first full year of Oxford Open in July. The journals taking part in the initiative represent a wide range of subject areas, and the level of interest in ‘author-pays’ open access models varies tremendously between disciplines, from ~10% of authors selecting the open access option in the Life Sciences, compared with ~5% in medicine and public health, and ~3% in the humanities and social sciences. A few life science titles in the areas of molecular and computational biology have seen up to 20% uptake, and in recognition of this, the 2007 subscription prices for these titles have been adjusted to reflect the expected proportion of open access content in the future.
These results show that while open access is beginning to be embraced in some subject areas, the level of uptake is generally quite low, and it is therefore likely that open access will be only one of a range of models that will be necessary to support the requirements of different research communities. We will continue to monitor uptake in 2007, and to share the results of our experiments with the community to help develop a better understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of open access and subscription-based business models....
Comment. To be precise, the low uptake Oxford has experienced in some fields is for fee-based OA, not for OA itself.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/16/2006 08:53:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
