paywalled open access study
Glenn Hampson
LOL. A new article published in Scientometrics on the current state of open access--- “The oligopoly of open access publishing”--- is paywalled. Anyone able to share a link? Asking for a friend but I’d like to read this too. Thanks!
Wagner, Caroline
Here is a copy for y’all.
Caroline S. Wagner, Ph.D.
Professor of Public Policy
John Glenn College of Public Affairs
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio, USA 43210
Distinguished Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Elected Member, Council on Foreign Relations
Affiliate, East Asian Studies Center
Affiliate, Battelle Center for Science and Technology in the Public Interest
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Lisa Hinchliffe
LOL. A new article published in Scientometrics on the current state of open access--- “The oligopoly of open access publishing”--- is paywalled. Anyone able to share a link? Asking for a friend but I’d like to read this too. Thanks!
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Glenn Hampson
Thank you Ketih, Caroline, Lisa, Richard!! 😊
From: Richard Poynder <richard...@cantab.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 7:37 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Subject: Re: paywalled open access study
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Sent from my iPhone
On 24 Jan 2024, at 15:32, Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org> wrote:
LOL. A new article published in Scientometrics on the current state of open access--- “The oligopoly of open access publishing”--- is paywalled. Anyone able to share a link? Asking for a friend but I’d like to read this too. Thanks!
--
Glenn Hampson
Thanks again for the paper link. This is a pretty damning report from some thoughtful experts (Vincent especially has written extensively for years in this field). Open is good. Mandating specific open solutions like APCs may be less good, however. Here are the key takeaways (to me anyway):
- Market concentration in open access publishing has increased (by source, publisher, and domain, especially in the high-end market)
- Open access publishing mandates have driven up overall system costs in some regions
- Open access papers (considering gold and hybrid only) do not have a significant or uniform citation advantage
- Inequity has increased as a result of APCs (see passage and figure below)
“Although some publishers offer the APC waivers for authors from low-income countries,
the offer is often more symbolic than practical. While most OA publishers offer waivers for
low-income countries (defined by World Bank), complex and strict waiver conditions make
it difficult for researchers from these countries to publish their research in an OA journal
with APCs. In 2020, only 57,771 out of 1,930,895 OA papers were eligible for the APC
waivers and the waived APCs only accounted for 2.33% of total OA revenue generated by
publishers. Previous studies indicate that scholars from developing countries struggle with
the unaffordable APCs (Cox, 2020; Krauskopf, 2021; Pavan & Barbosa, 2018). Those findings
are confirmed here (Fig. 8) which displays the publishing preferences of authors from
different countries, as indicated by the ratio of OA papers (X-axis) to all papers and the ratio
of paid OA papers to all OA papers (Y-axis). The results show that although authors from
low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and some G20 developing countries, such as
Indonesia, Mexico, and Brazil, wish to make their research open access, they tend to prefer
free OA rather than paid OA. Specifically, in 2020, 90.36% of Indonesian papers were published
in OA, but only 17.63% of them were published in OA journals that charge APCs.
Conversely, authors from the European Union and G7 countries are more inclined to pay
and publish their research findings in OA journals that charge APCs.
Indeed, current OA mandates promoted by Plan S attribute to a huge demand in OA
publishing market, which could lead to the inflation of APCs considering scholarly publication
is a price-inelastic product (Khoo, 2019; Shu et al., 2018). Figure 9 tracks the average
list price of Gold OA APCs among five major publishers between 2011 and 2020, and
presents an increase of list prices, especially in recent three years. Since scholarly publications
are usually linked to research evaluation, authors and their funders would like to
publish their research in high prestige journals when paying the APCs, implying higher
visibility and influence in exchange for the money paid.”
Wagner, Caroline
Dear Glenn and friends,
Another thing I see happening due to the multiplying number of OA publishers is a flood of poor scholarship. I observe this driving the system further towards elite reputation. If one must wade through masses of materials, better to just cite big-name people from big-name journals. I suppose this is a testable hypothesis, but I haven’t tested it myself. Anyone else?
Caroline S. Wagner, Ph.D.
Professor of Public Policy
John Glenn College of Public Affairs
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio, USA 43210
Distinguished Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science
Elected Member, Council on Foreign Relations
Affiliate, East Asian Studies Center
Affiliate, Battelle Center for Science and Technology in the Public Interest
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/osi2016-25/DM4PR17MB60649F7772869DBABD7AC52DC57B2%40DM4PR17MB6064.namprd17.prod.outlook.com.
Glenn Hampson
Maybe something like this? Reputation and new venture performance in online markets: The moderating role of market crowding - ScienceDirect
“Signaling theory suggests that quality signals are most important in noisy environments. As market crowding is associated with strong informational noise, it may increase the benefits of quality signals like reputation. The resource-based view considers reputation as an intangible resource and a potential source of competitive advantage. As only rare resources can lead to a competitive advantage, crowding may reduce the competitive benefits of reputation when a favorable reputation no longer represents a rare resource in crowded markets. I develop these arguments for the context of online markets and propose that a favorable reputation becomes less valuable when such markets become more crowded.
I test my hypotheses with data from 797,087 sales transactions for 5760 new ventures and 10,449 products across 119 platform-mediated online markets. My main finding is that crowding strongly attenuates the positive relationship between ventures' reputation and sales performance. Even conservative estimates show that a favorable reputation is 38% to 42% more beneficial in markets with low (versus high) crowding. My study's theoretical propositions and empirical findings allow for more accurate sales predictions in online markets and a better understanding of when and how firms benefit from a favorable reputation.”
From: Wagner, Caroline <wagne...@osu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 9:46 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'osi20...@googlegroups.com' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: paywalled open access study
Dear Glenn and friends,
Wagner, Caroline
Precisely! We could use this as a testable hypothesis and then run some tests. Anyone want to work on this one?
Glenn Hampson
From: Rick Anderson <rick_a...@byu.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 11:40 AM
To: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>; 'osi20...@googlegroups.com' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: paywalled open access study
Are there any examples of funders or policy-setters actually mandating the APC as a funding mechanism for required OA? I’m familiar with such bodies creating OA mandates that end up strongly supporting the APC solution in practice (*cough* Plan S *cough*) but I’m not aware of any such bodies actually saying that what they want is to see the APC model proliferate.
From: Glenn Hampson <gham...@nationalscience.org>
Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 at 10:29 AM
To: "'osi20...@googlegroups.com'" <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: paywalled open access study
Thanks again for the paper link. This is a pretty damning report from some thoughtful experts (Vincent especially has written extensively for years in this field). Open is good. Mandating specific open solutions like APCs may be less good, however. Here are the key takeaways (to me anyway):
Glenn Hampson
Is there a difference, Rick, at least practically speaking? Consider the OA publishing policy of the Gates Foundation (among many others). “All Funded Research including articles accepted for publication shall be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Generic License (CC BY 4.0) or an equivalent license.” Compliance is a requirement of funding.
Let’s say a Gates-funded researcher, Dr. William Wonka, has his paper accepted to Wiley’s Journal of Wild Orange Walnuts (WOW). WOW is the preeminent journal in walnutology, so this is where Dr. Wonka really wants to be published. WOW’s only OA publishing option is APC-based, however; there isn’t a hybrid or S20 option available (and after a bit of searching, Dr. Wonka discovers this is the same situation with most OA publishers on his submission list). So WOW it is, and Dr. Wonka’s APC bill for $10k gets sent to Gates (side note: the bill gets rejected because only DOAJ journal APCs are reimbursed, but that’s another story).
In this situation, the Gates Foundation is only mandating OA, not APCs. But Dr. Wonka’s preferred journal is APC-based, as are most of the reasonable alternatives. So in practice, doesn’t Gates’s OA mandate end up being an APC mandate? That is, if Gates truly had reservations about seeing the APC model proliferate, wouldn’t they beat a realistic path for researchers toward non-APC OA options like hybrid, S20, and diamond?
From: osi20...@googlegroups.com <osi20...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Glenn Hampson
Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2024 1:40 PM
To: 'osi20...@googlegroups.com' <osi20...@googlegroups.com>
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Rick Anderson
Yes, there’s a big difference – because not all top journals are APC-funded. You’ve constructed a scenario in which a researcher’s only reasonable alternatives are APC-funded journals, and I’m sure that’s scenario applies for some (heck, likely many) researchers. But it’s not true for all (or, I suspect, most). The people mandating OA are not telling journals what funding mechanisms they have to use to provide OA services, and publishers do have lots of alternatives.
That said, I don’t disagree that funder mandates do tend to lead to the proliferation of APCs. But there really is a meaningful difference between mandating OA publication and mandating an APC-based model.
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Lisa Hinchliffe
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Glenn Hampson
Ahh---I see the rub. I referred to “mandating” APCs in my original email summary when I should have said something like “using” APCs. I’ve been interpreting your question as an interesting hypothetical. Sorry about that.
Still, it’s an interesting hypothetical! When you have a hundreds-plus policies mandating open access publishing, and 70% of such articles are paid for via APCs, then these mandates are essentially requiring APCs, are they not? I mean, do most researchers actually have realistic or desirable alternatives (since there aren’t many diamond or S20 publishers around), short of just putting their AAMs in open repositories and VORs in high-JIF subscription journals (the overwhelming majority of high-JIF journals are still subscription based, so the attraction is understandable)? I get it---it’s semantics---but it kinda’ isn’t, too.
Lisa Hinchliffe
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Anthony Watkinson
It is part of our ongoing Harbingers research [https://www.ciber-research.com/harbingers-3/] to ask questions about attitudes to and practices in achieving OA and not surprisingly ECRs are keen on OA but not at the expense of using their grant money to pay APCs. For someone who remembers the days when green was UK government policy and also notes that this is still the case that green is pushed by UKRI it is strange that UK ECRs do not know about green when asked why they put their papers into repositories. They mention the REF when pressed.
Anthony
------ Original Message ------
From: gham...@nationalscience.org
To: osi20...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 24th 2024, 23:43
Subject: RE: paywalled open access study
Ahh---I see the rub. I referred to “mandating” APCs in my original email summary when I should have said something like “using” APCs. I’ve been interpreting your question as an interesting hypothetical. Sorry about that.
Still, it’s an interesting hypothetical! When you have a hundreds-plus policies mandating open access publishing, and 70% of such articles are paid for via APCs, then these mandates are essentially requiring APCs, are they not? I mean, do most researchers actually have realistic or desirable alternatives (since there aren’t many diamond or S20 publishers around), short of just putting their AAMs in open repositories and VORs in high-JIF subscription journals (the overwhelming majority of high-JIF journals are still subscription based, so the attraction is understandable)? I get it---it’s semantics---but it kinda’ isn’t, too.
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