Beyond APCs
Exploring new, more inclusive business models for open access publishing. 9th April 2020.
Professor Martin Paul Eve, Birkbeck, University of London
Contexts
- Plan S
- Digital Scholarship
- The Humanities
A matter of distribution: there are 100 people in a room for a talk
- They have $10 each
- The speaker speaks for free
- The venue needs $50 to cover its staff costs
- There are 40 talks per year
Subscription logic
- Each person pays $0.50 and hears the talk
- No payment, no entry
- Each person can only afford half of the talks
- The general public cannot attend
OA with an Article Processing Charge logic
- The speaker pays the full fee ($50)
- The problem is that the speaker only has $10
- The general public and all others can attend
OA with consortial logic
- 5 people attend each talk and pay $10 each
- They let anyone else attend for free
- Everyone can hear 50% of the talks, including the public
This is how OA looks in a dry funding climate
- Is the "venue" overcharging?
- The distribution of the economics is the most important thing
- APCs do not work well in the humanities and elsewhere
How much does it cost to publish a (digital) book?
- Mellon Ithaka study (2016): $15,140 - $129,909
- Palgrave: $95 x 200 copies = $19,000
- Palgrave: Book Processing Charge: $17,000
- CUP: Book Processing Charge: $10,000
- Ubiquity Press: Book Processing Charge: £6,020
COPIM
Our Solution for Journals
Megajournal / Multijournal / Not-for-profit / Collectively Funded
Support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
- $90,000 planning grant
- University of Lincoln, UK, 2014-2015
- $741,000 sustainability grant
- Birkbeck, University of London, UK, 2015-2018
The Subscription Model as it Exists
The OLH Library Partnership Subsidy Model
>~300 Libraries Financially Supporting the OLH in First Five Years
27 Journals on or Supported by the Platform (909 articles in first year)
Cost per institution per article: around $1.10 per institution per article. Target of 300+ libraries by end of year three.
118,686 unique readers. Average of 131 readers per article. $0.008 per institution per reader.
Ongoing Project to "Flip" Subscription Journals

Spreading The Model

The End
Thank you!
Presentation licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license. All institutional images excluded from CC license.
Available to view online at https://pres.eve.gd/BeyondAPCs2020.