Cara Kaufman and Alma Wills, The Facts About Open Access, ALPSP, October 4, 2005. This is the final version of the "study of the financial and non-financial effects of alternative business models for scholarly journals," sponsored by the ALPSP, AAAS, and Highwire, and undertaken by the Kaufman-Wills Group. ALPSP is charging £55 for members and £95 for non-members. From the web site:
Discussion of Open Access tends to be strong on rhetoric but short on facts. The objective of this independent study was to determine the impact of open access on scholarly journals’ financial and non-financial factors and to establish a substantial body of data about different forms of Open Access publishing, and a baseline of comparison with traditional subscription publishing. In the first phase of the study, the researchers surveyed 495 journals from four groups: ALPSP member journals (128), AAMC member journals (34), a subset of journals hosted by HW (85) and 248 journals from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The survey consisted of 33 closed-ended and 5 open-ended questions and addressed the following major categories: [1] Demographic: Including type of publisher, location of publishing offices, subject area, type of content published, [2] Financial: Including revenue models, sources of financial support, percentage of total each revenue type represents, revenue trends and expectations, current surplus or deficit, [3] Non-financial: Including print format, copyediting policy, number of internal/external peer reviews, services offered to Authors, copyright and permissions policies, pre/post-publishing rights of authors. The open-ended questions asked for the respondent’s thoughts on the challenges and opportunities presented by open access, as well as the movement’s impact on their own journal or journals and all of scholarly publishing. In the second phase of the study in-depth interviews were conducted with 22 scholarly journal publishers of all types and sizes, representing more than 4,000 journals. The survey, completed in 2005, covers the full-spectrum of business models being used in scholarly publishing – from traditional access provided primarily via subscriptions (Subscription Access) through Delayed Open Access to Optional (author-side payment) and Full Open Access.
For those who can't afford the full, final version, see the first 32 pages of the full report, which are OA; Cara Kaufman's presentation of an earlier version (London Book Fair, 3/14/05); or Lila Guterman's summary (Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/15/05).
Update. Although the final version of the study was first posted to the ALPSP site on October 4, it was not officially announced until October 11. Here's the 10/11 press release.
Update. Although on October 4, the full report was available only to paying members or customers, it's now OA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/04/2005 07:30:00 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.
