The document discusses sustaining the knowledge commons through open access scholarship, emphasizing the public interest and collective knowledge benefits of open access. It outlines the resource requirements for small scholar-led publishers and the dynamics of open access article processing charges (APCs) based on recent surveys. The authors highlight trends, challenges, and future work in the open access publishing landscape while inviting collaboration and further research.

1. SUSTAINING THE KNOWLEDGE
COMMONS: OPEN ACCESS
SCHOLARSHIP
Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor & Principal Investigator
Jihane Salhab
Research Assistant
University of Ottawa School of Information Studies
http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
Presentation to IDRC Open Access Group, September 9, 2015,
Ottawa, ON.

2. KNOWLEDGE COMMONS
•Public
interest
•Collective
knowledge of
humankind
• Everyone can freely draw from our collective
knowledge (open access)
• Everyone qualified to welcome to contribute

3. BUDAPEST OPEN ACCESS (BOAI, 2002)
VISION
“Removing access barriers to [scholarly] literature
will accelerate research,
enrich education, share the
learning of the rich with the
poor and the poor with the
rich…and lay the foundation
for uniting humanity in a
common intellectual
conversation and quest for
knowledge”.

4. “Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free
of charge, and free of most copyright and
licensing restrictions” (Suber, 2004).

5. HOW TO SUSTAIN SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING IN
AN OPEN ACCESS ENVIRONMENT?
SUSTAININGKNOWLEDGECOMMONS.ORG
 Macro analysis prospects for global transition
 Resource requirements for small scholar-led
publishers (qualitative to quantitative)
 Open access article processing charges (APCs)
 Library hosting services costs
 Revisit macro analysis

6. WE HAVE THE RESOURCES FOR A FULLY OA
SCHOLARLY JOURNAL PUBLISHING SYSTEM
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, Jihane Salhab,
Alexis Calvé-Genest, Tony Horava
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
MORRISON (2013)

7. Resource requirements
for small scholar-led
journals

8. RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS FOR SMALL
SCHOLAR-LED PUBLISHERS: SPONSORSHIP
MODEL (ONE SCENARIO)_
 Small journal, about 20 articles / year
 $8,000 course release for senior academic
 $12,000 part-time support staff
 $3,000 journal hosting (érudit or OJS)
 $2,000 other costs (graphics, translation)
 Total $25,000 ~ $1,250 / article

9. THE DIVERSITY AND VALUE OF SMALL
SCHOLAR-LED JOURNALS
 Esoteric / academic, professional, hybrids
 Social media very important to not relevant
 Some hybrid print / online, others online only
 Article level a few pages to monograph length
 Innovations, e.g. hybrid journal / archive service
 Local leadership opportunities
 Community engagement

10. OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE PROCESS CHARGES
(APCS): MAY 2014 DOAJ SURVEY (MORRISON,
SALHAB ET AL, 2015)
 26% (2,567 journals) in DOAJ have APCs
 Surveyed 1,432 journals stratified random
sample
 > 61% journals are commercial
 Skewed publisher size – 50+ journals with APCs
or 9 or fewer (1 most commons), not much in
middle
 Volatile sector – average $964 USD, $0 most
common
 Exact APC usually varies

11. PRICING VARIATIONS BASED ON WORK
INVOLVED
 Pricing by article type (e.g. less for case reports,
more for research articles)
 Pricing by length of article (page charges or page
limit with pricing for extra pages)
 Language editing services (sometimes optional)
 Discounts or waiver for high quality work
 Discount for submitting work in publisher’s
preferred format or template
 Discount for manuscript transfer
 Extra charge for fast track

12. DISCOUNTS AUTHOR OR INSTITUTIONAL
CONTRIBUTIONS
 Membership in society
 Organizational publisher memberships
 Discounts for peer review and/or membership in
Editorial Board
 Loyalty discount

13. DISCOUNT BASED ON INCOME / NEED
 Low / medium income countries
 Author hardship
 Student discount

14. LIBERTAS ACADEMICA AVERAGE PRICE INCREASE
MAY 2014 – MAY 2015
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
18%
21%
56%
USD EUR JPY

15. BIOMED CENTRAL
APC: PRICE CHANGE % - 2014-2015
(GBP, EUR & USD)
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
7%
12%
-1%
AVERAGE
% change 2015/2014 - USD % change 2015/2014 - EUR % change 2015/2014 - GBP

16. BIOMED CENTRAL
BMC PSYCOLOGY, BMC MEDICINE & MOBILE DNA
APC: % OF PRICE CHANGE - 2014-2015 (USD)
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
-3%
-2%
-16%
Mobile DNA BMC Medicine BMC Psychology

17. IMPACT OF CURRENCY FLUCTUATIONS
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
10%
18%
5%
21%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
CAD JPY GBP EUR
R
a
t
e
%
Loss of major currencies to the Dollar in 2015
Series1

18. DOES SAME PRICE MEAN SAME COST?
PLOS ONE CASE
1350 USD TO CAD
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
1470
1620
1795
0
500
1000
1500
2000
May-14 May-15 Sep. 2015

19. PUBLISHER CASE STUDY: HINDAWI
sustainingknowledgecommons.org
A SSHRC Insight Development Project
Heather Morrison, & Jihane Salhab,
Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
École des sciences de l’information / School of
Information Studies http://arts.uottawa.ca/sis/
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
0
$500
$600
$1,000
$300
$1,200
$800
$1,500
$400
$700
$1,750
APC 2013
Frequency – December 2013
0
50
100
150
200
250
0
$300
$500
$600
$800
$1,000
$1,200
$1,250
$1,500
$1,750
$2,000
$2,250
APC 2015
Frequency – May 2015

20. NEXT STEPS AND OPEN RESEARCH
APPROACH
 2015 and beyond: trends in OA APCs
 Impact factor / DOAJ & APC
 Resource requirements & library hosting: caes studies
 SKC follows an open research approach. We invite
you to follow developments on the project blog
sustainingknowledgecommons.org download and
work with data posted in the dataverse
http://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dvn/dv/oaapc/, or
build on the open bibliography prepared by Jihane
http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/sustaining-
the-knowledge-commons-skc-selected-bibliography-
on-open-access/

21. QUESTIONS? CONTACT:
Heather Morrison
Heather.Morrison@uottawa.ca
Jihane Salhab
jderg011@uottawa.ca
sustainingknowledgecommons.org

22. REFERENCES
 Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) (2002).
http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read
 Morrison, H. (2013). The economics of scholarly
communication in transition. First Monday 6:3
http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4
370
 Morrison, H.; Salhab, J.; Calvé-Genest, A.; Horava, T.
Open Access Article Processing Charges: DOAJ
Survey May 2014. Publications 2015, 3, 1-16.
doi:10.3390/publications3010001
 Research Councils UK (RCUK) 2014. 2014
Independent Review of Implementation.
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/openaccess/2014revie
w/
 Suber (2004). Open Access Overview
http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm