The transition to open access (OA) is being accompanied by opening up financial data about the scholarly communications system. The costs of both journal subscriptions and open access article processing charges (APCs) – along with the revenues of the publishers who receive them – are now subject to great scrutiny.
This session will describe how and why this is happening and discuss the potential impact of the ‘new normal’ of financial transparency for publishers, librarians, and intermediaries.
3. Introduction
»Transition to open access brings about pressure for increased
financial transparency for publishers and institutions
»Examples:
› JiscTotal Cost of Ownership project
› RCUK andWellcomeTrust APC data
› Stuart Lawson’s Freedom of Information dataset on
journal subscriptions
03/03/2016 Making sense of open scholarly communications data
4. Benefits of sharing data
»Inform negotiations with publishers
»Benchmark spend against other institutions
»Model transition to open access
»Not a means of informing researchers where to publish
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6. Total cost of ownership project
»Project collects article-level APC data from institutions
»Main drivers:
› As manyAPC payments as possible should be publicly available
› This data should be as standardised and well-structured as possible
»Open APC data makes the market transparent, which benefits
institutions
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7. Total cost of ownership project
»Started by Jisc Collections in 2013
»Began with 17 participating institutions
»Now has grown to include data from over 40 institutions
»Compatible with RCUK and COAF reporting
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8. Total cost of ownership project
»Inform Jisc Collections’ negotiations with publishers
»Help funders evaluate and shape open access policies
»Allow institutions to track and benchmark their spend
What is data used for?
03/03/2016 Making sense of open scholarly communications data
10. Trends in average APC
»Average APC of £1,713 for
2014-2015
»The average APC is rising
»Huge variation in APC costs
Average APC 2013-2015 (15 institutions)
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-2%
+8%
£1,540
£1,560
£1,580
£1,600
£1,620
£1,640
£1,660
£1,680
£1,700
£1,720
£1,740
2013 2014 2015
11. 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500
Frontiers
PLOS
IEEE
Taylor & Francis
BioMed Central
Royal Society
Royal Society of Chemistry
IOP Publishing
Average*
Springer
American Society for Microbiology
BMJ
Wiley
Elsevier
Oxford University Press
American Chemical Society
Cambridge University Press
Society for Neuroscience
NPG
Walters Kluwer
Cell Press
Average APC by publisher
Average APC Jul 2014-Aug 2015
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13. Elsevier
Wiley
Springer
NPG
OUP
BioMed Central
PLOS
American Chemical Society
BMJ
Taylor & Francis
Royal Society of Chemistry
Royal Society
Frontiers
IOP Publishing
IEEE
Cell Press
CUP
Wolters Kluwer
American Society for Microbiology
Society for Neuroscience
Other
£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
£5,000,000.00
RevenuefromAPCs
Publisher revenue from APCs
Publisher revenue from APCs, Aug 2014-Jul 2015
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14. Hybrid vs. full open access
»Most expenditure goes to
hybrid APCs
»The average APC for hybrid
journals is consistently higher
»Hybrid average: £1,867
»Full OA average: £1,225
Hybrid/Full OA expenditure Jul 2014-Aug 2015
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Hybrid
83%
Full OA
17%
15. Rising hybrid APCs
»The average APC is increasing
more rapidly overall for hybrid
journals
»Hybrid journals are thus
responsible for most of the rise
in average APCs overall
Average APC by journal type, 2013-2015 (15 institutions)
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[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE][CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
£0.00
£500.00
£1,000.00
£1,500.00
£2,000.00
£2,500.00
2013 2014 2015
Full OA Hybrid
16. Rising market share for full open access
»Open access journals have
increased their market share
from 4% to 23% in three years
» This may reflect authors’ price
sensitivity to hybrid journals’
higher APCs
»Are hybrid journals slowing the
transition to open access?
Percentage of APC expenditure by journal type,
2013-2015 (15 institutions)
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[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
2013 2014 2015
Full OA Hybrid
18. Context
»Article processing charges are part of a larger picture of total
journal expenditure
»It is difficult to access information about subscription expenditure
› Non-disclosure agreements from Elsevier
› Unlike with research council funded APCs, there is no incentive to
share private subscription data
»Much of the information which exists is confidential
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19. Freedom of information dataset
»The next part of this analysis relies on subscription data gathered
by Stuart Lawson through Freedom of Information requests
»It tracks expenditure with 10 publishers from 153 UK universities
»Not a Jisc project
»Most comprehensive open data set available
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20. APC vs. subscription expenditure
»APC expenditure is 16% of
total journal expenditure
APC and subscription expenditure, 2014
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APC
expenditure
16%
Subscription
expenditure
84%
21. APC and subscription revenue by publisher, 2014
»Elsevier receives the highest amount of APCs and subscriptions
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£0.00 £10,000,000.00 £20,000,000.00
Elsevier
Wiley
Springer
Taylor & Francis
Nature Publishing Group
Sage
Oxford University Press
Institute of Physics Publishing
Cambridge University Press
Royal Society of Chemistry
APC revenue Subscription revenue
22. APC and subscription revenue by publisher, 2014
»Some publishers rely on APCs for a higher proportion of revenue
than others
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[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
[CELLRANGE]
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
Elsevier
Wiley
Springer
Taylor & Francis
Nature Publishing Group
Sage
Oxford University Press
Institute of Physics Publishing
Cambridge University Press
Royal Society of Chemistry
APC revenue Subscription revenue
23. Elsevier
Wiley
Springer
Taylor & Francis
Sage
Nature Publishing Group
£0
£10,000,000
£20,000,000
£30,000,000
£40,000,000
£50,000,000
£60,000,000
£70,000,000
£80,000,000
£90,000,000
£100,000,000
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Elsevier Wiley Springer Taylor & Francis Sage
Oxford University Press Cambridge University Press Nature Publishing Group Royal Society of Chemistry Institute of Physics Publishing
Increase in subscription revenue
Subscription revenue, 2010-2014
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24. Growth in subscription revenue
Yearly growth in subscription revenue, 2011-2014
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-5.00%
0.00%
5.00%
10.00%
15.00%
20.00%
25.00%
2011 2012 2013 2014
Elsevier Wiley Springer Taylor & Francis
Sage Oxford University Press Cambridge University Press Nature Publishing Group
Royal Society of Chemistry Institute of Physics Publishing Average
25. Capturing and releasing APC data
Total cost of ownership spreadsheet
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26. Data collection principles
»RecordAPC details in a standardized way
»Benefits:
› Makes it easier to account to funders
› Makes it easy to share payment details with other universities
› Reduces administrative burden
»Challenges:
› Tracking payments made from departmental or project budgets
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27. Total cost of ownership project
»Spreadsheet to recordAPCs
»Benefits:
› Easy to use
› Compatible with RCUK and COAF reporting
› Fields map to RIOXX and CASRAI where applicable
› Can import data from other systems (for example, Eprints)
»Released on Figshare under CC0 license
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34. APC reporting in the future
Monitor local and Monitor UK
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35. Monitor Local
»Allows institutions to record and report data on open access
outputs
› Includes both gold and green open access
»Has an easy-to-use web interface
»Autocompletes metadata
»Validates and checks compliance
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36. Monitor UK
»Aggregates APC data from across institutions and presents them
as a dashboard
»Enables institutions to benchmark spend against other institutions,
and compare publisher pricing and compliance
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38. Monitor Local and UK
»Pilot projects completed in 2015
»Are now in development
»Are scheduled to be released in summer 2016
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40. Summary of key points
»Article processing charges are an increasingly important part of
institutions’ expenditure on publication
»APCs vary between publishers, institutions, and types of journal
»There is still a lot to learn about these costs
»The more transparency we have around article processing charges
and other financial data, the better decisions we can make
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41. Summary of key points
»Releasing open financial data helps your institution by:
› Making it easier for us to negotiate on your behalf with publishers
› Helping you to track costs in a standardized way that can be
measured against other institutions
› Increasing general awareness about article processing charges
› Allowing funders and policy makers to aid the transition to
open access
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42. Summary of key points
»JiscTotal Cost of Ownership project:
http://bit.ly/_Jisc_APC_Collection
»Open data on article processing charges:
http://bit.ly/_Figshare_Article_Processing
»Open data on journal subscription costs:
http://bit.ly/_Figshare_Journal_Subscription_Costs
»Jisc Monitor:
http://bit.ly/_Jisc_Monitoring_Open_Access_Activity
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43. jisc.ac.uk
Making sense of open scholarly communications data
Katie Shamash
Scholarly communications analyst
Katie.Shamash@jisc.ac.uk
03/03/2016 Making sense of open scholarly communications data
Hinweis der Redaktion
Who is using Jisc TCO?
Who is interested in knowing results from data
Who wants hands-on help with APC reporting
Since APCs are publicly funded and require reporting to funders
FOI not a Jisc project
Institutions as a whole, institutions individually, funders/policy makers
Ask if institutions think such data would influence researchers’ publishing decisions
greater transparency around APCs goes some way toward creating a equitable mechanism for allocating total costs amongst HEIs. i.e. the historical print spend element is not equitable or based on an observable metric but least APCs are!
Average APC meeting the predictions in the Finch report
Jisc Collections in negotiations with Nature, Elsevier this year
Note that sub REVENUE is increasing, but GROWTH is slowing
Based on TCO spreadsheet but includes more fields for institutions who need them