Cost of peer review

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 06:27:29 +0100

On Thu, 6 May 2010, Joseph Esposito wrote:

> I agree with the entirety of Professor Harnad's comment except
> for this:
>
> The institutions can and will pay for that, per paper refereed,
> out of a fraction of their annual windfall
> subscription-cancellation savings.
>
> Of course, we shall see when it happens, but I ask the members of
> this list to look around them. Universities are high-cost
> organizations. That is not to say that the costs are not worth
> it. But the windfall? Doubtful.
>
> But I say I agree with most of what Professor Harnad says.
> Libraries will cancel subscriptions (some already are). And
> universities will (mostly) mandate deposits into repositories.
> So the vision promulgated here seems to me to be directionally
> correct. It's simply an expensive solution to a small problem.

It's good to hear that Joseph Esposito agrees on the solution -- but we
don't seem to agree on the problem (or the cost!):

The problem is needlessly lost research usage and impact, because it is
not currently accessible to all of its intended users, but only those
whose institutions can afford a subscription to the journal in which it
happens to be published.

The evidence that this problem is large, not small, is the OA Impact
Advantage (the higher usage and citation rate of OA articles) and the
small fraction of all peer reviewed journals that even the richest
universities can afford to subscribe to. (There are at least 25,000
journals publishing at least 2.5 million articles a year.)

Universal Green OA will solve this problem -- not because it causes
universities to cancel journals (it is not sure it will do that, since
the Green OA version is just the author's refereed final draft, provided
as a supplement, and it certainly has not done so already, when less
than 20% of any journal's content is OA), nor because it lowers journal
publishing costs -- but because universal Green solves the access/impact
problem completely.

It is, however, sure, that if universal Green OA does eventually cause
universal subscription cancellation by universities -- because the Green
OA supplement is enough, and there is no longer a market for the print
edition, the online edition, access-provision or archiving, but just for
peer review -- then a fraction of the money universities save annually
from those same subscription cancellations will pay for the "rump" costs
of publishing its journal article output: peer review.

Stevan Harnad

> On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 7:25 PM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> First things first. Once Green OA self-archiving mandates are
>> adopted universally by institutions and funders, the planet
>> will have Green OA (to the refereed final drafts of articles
>> accepted for publication), at long last, to the enormous
>> benefit of research, researchers, their institutions, and the
>> public that funds the research, in terms of research uptake,
>> usage, applications, impact and progress.
>>
>> As long as subscriptions continue to pay for publication (the
>> print edition, the online edition, distribution, archiving, and
>> peer-review/copy-editing), there is no need for any further
>> change.
>>
>> If and when universal Green OA should eventually make
>> institutional subscriptions no longer sustainable (because
>> users are satisfied with the Green OA version, so their
>> institutions cancel their subscriptions), then publishers will
>> cancel the print edition and online edition, offload the
>> distribution and archiving to the global network of Green OA
>> institutional repositories, and charge only for the
>> peer-review/copy-editing costs. The institutions can and will
>> pay for that, per paper refereed, out of a fraction of their
>> annual windfall subscription-cancellation savings.
>>
>> But we are nowhere near that yet. Most of today's Gold OA fees
>> are not only much higher than they would be if users were all
>> satisfied with the Green OA version, but the money to pay for
>> them is still mostly tied up in journal subscriptions.
>>
>> That's why all this pre-emptive speculation is irrelevant. The
>> only thing missing today is OA itself, and universal Green OA
>> mandates will provide it. After that, publishing will adapt as
>> a matter of natural course.
>>
>> Stevan Harnad
>
>
Received on Fri May 07 2010 - 08:09:33 BST