Hindawi Publishing Corporation represents a new breed of journal publisher. Less than a decade old and based in the Middle East, it publishes 31 mainly European and North American journals in niche STM fields. While many of these journals are supported by subscriptions, Hindawi sees its future in terms of Open Access publishing, and specifically OA publishing supported by author contribution. Can this OA model be economically viable?
The ALPSP report "The Facts About Open Access" found that only a handful of OA journals were supporting themselves with author side charges - the rest relied on advertising and sponsorship. As for the major players, Springer's author fee service, Open Choice, had accepted only two dozen articles in the year following its introduction. This is not the case at Cairo-based Hindawi Publishing Corporation. Founded by Egyptian professor Ahmed Hindawi in 1997, the company has moved from publishing a handful of mathematics journals to engaging in OA in a serious way. Of its 31 journals (all fully peer reviewed), 12 are true OA, supported by fees raised by author submission of articles. The company claims to have grown by 40-50% in the past four years, and aims to keep growing at this rate for the next four to five years.
Significantly, the company aims to maintain this growth by expanding the reach of its OA, author-pays model. In an interview with EPS, Hindawi's Senior Publishing Developer Paul Peters said that the company was looking to acquire more titles to digitise and make freely available (all articles published by Hindawi are available on a Creative Commons license), as well as the establishment of new journals in new fields....[One factor in Hindawi's success is price.] With the Springer Open Choice service, accepted articles can be published in the author's choice of journal (Springer's catalogue contains some very prestigious titles) but for this the author would be charged USD3,000. The ALPSP report found most charges were in the range of USD2,000 to USD4,700. It typically costs USD495 to submit an article to Hindawi journals, though some titles charge on a per-page basis.
Update. A full text copy of this article is now OA at the Hindawi site.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2005 09:10:00 PM.
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.
