Learn how Jisc Collections is addressing the cost UK higher education institutions face in maintaining subscriptions and also paying for article processing charges to the same publishers for the same journals.

2. Total cost of ownership
Reducing the cost of open access

3. » Describe the situation
» Explain the task Jisc Collections has to undertake to address
the situation
» The actions taken so far
» The results so far
» The work still to be done
This presentation will:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 3

4. » The Government announced on 16 July 2012 that it has accepted
the recommendations of the Working Group on Expanding Access
to Published Research Findings, chaired by Dame Janet Finch
» But it recommended a clear policy direction in the UK towards
support for ‘Gold’ open access publishing, where publishers receive
their revenues from authors rather than readers, and so research
articles become freely accessible to everyone immediately upon
publication
» Research Councils UK also announced on 16 July a new open access
policy to come into effect for all research articles submitted for
funding from 1 April 2013
The situation
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 4

5. “future discussions and negotiations between universities and
publishers (including learned societies) on the pricing of big deals
and other subscriptions should take into account the financial
implications of the shift to publication in open access and hybrid
journals, of extensions to licensing, and the resultant changes in
revenues provided to publishers”
Recommendation viii:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 5

6. » Research Libraries UK estimates the UK academic sector spends
£192m per year to publishers for journal and database access
» equivalent to almost a tenth of the total QR grant
» Research Councils UK estimated that 31,000 published papers
came out of research that it funded in 2010. At the average APC of
£1,727 used in the Finch modelling, that's a total cost of £53.5m,
and around 3% of the grant funding it provides
Why this recommendation is important
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 6

7. The Hybrid journal
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 7
“A hybrid open access journal is an subscription journal in which
some of the articles are open access.This status typically requires
the payment of a publication fee (also called an article processing
charge or APC) to the publisher.”
From Wikipedia:

8. Pinfield, S., Salter, J. and Bath, P. A. (2015),The “total cost of publication” in a hybrid open-access environment:
Institutional approaches to funding journal article-processing charges in combination with subscriptions.
Journal of theAssociation for Information Science andTechnology. doi: 10.1002/asi.23446
APC charges
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 8
Table 2. Comparison of APCs charged by types of journals providing OA
Year
OA journals—published by
nonsubscription publishers
(mean)
Full-OA journals—published by
subscription publishers (mean)
Hybrid journals—published by
subscription publishers (mean)
2010 £1,141 £1,154 £1,842
2011 £1,281 £1,148 £1,905
2012 £1,227 £1,121 £1,873
2013 £1,106 £1,152 £1,857
2014 £1,068 £1,216 £1,799
5-year mean £1,136 £1,164 £1,849

9. 09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 9
TheTotal Cost of Ownership of Scholarly Publication
Subscription fees for
non-open content in
hybrid journals
Cost of Article Processing
Charges for Open Access
(APCs)
Total Cost
of
Ownership
+ =

10. 09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 10
some examples from data we have collected
Institution A’s annual subscription expenditure with
publisher 1 in 2014
£28,895
Publisher 1’s average Article Processing Charge (APC) £1,800
Number of Open Access article published by authors from
Institution A in 2014
12
Total expenditure for APCs with Publisher 1 in 2014 £21,600
Overall increase in theTotal Cost of Ownership
(subscription + APCs) compared to capped subscription
fees
73%

11. 09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 11
some examples from data we have collected
Institution B’s annual subscription expenditure
with publisher 2 in 2014
£810,975
Publisher 1’s average Article Processing Charge (APC) £2,000
Number of Open Access article published by authors
from Institution A in 2014
66
Total expenditure for APCs with Publisher 1 in 2014 £132,000
Overall increase in theTotal Cost of Ownership
(subscription + APCs) compared to capped
subscription fees
16%

12. » Map the landscape and collect the data, what is theTotal Cost of
Ownership and how will it increase without mitigation
» Model offset systems to understand how they might work to
mitigate increases
» Negotiate with publishers to introduce offset systems that will
mitigate increases to theTotal Cost of Ownership
The task
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 12

13. » We modelled a number of systems:
› Vouchers based on subscription spend – to be spent of APCs
› Credits against spend on APCs against subscriptions
› Capped extra payment for unlimited APCs
Effectiveness varies depending on the nature of the publisher
Must be able to administrate
Agnostic on which offset model is implemented – as long as we have
one!
Offset systems
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 13

14. What some of the publishers
said at first:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 14
Actions: Negotiations with publishers
What we did:
» There is no connection between
subscriptions and APC: they are
different services
» You have no mandate
» You have no data
» We don’t double dip
» Collected evidence including a
Government minister’s open
letter
» We got a mandate
» We collected the data
» We talk aboutTotal Cost of
Ownership

15. The Government “….looks to the publishing industry to develop
innovative and sustainable solutions”
“….a meaningful proportion of an institution's total [article processing
charges] with a publisher to be offset against total subscription
payments with that publisher.”
"Government welcomes efforts byJisc Collections to develop
sustainable funding models that establish a relationship between the
payment of APCs (and the costs of administering them) and subscription
fees
for an institution.”
In January 2014, Rt Hon David Willetts MP published an open
letter to Dame Janet Finch. In this letter he said:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 15

16. Institute of Physics: Wiley:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 16
Results so far: Some successes!
» A three year pilot agreement
running from May 2014 means
that IOP Publishing will offset
90% of a university’s expenditure
in one year on APCs, or the total
cost of their subscriptions,
whichever is the greater
» From January 2015 to December
2017, the agreement provides
credits for APCs to universities
that subscribe toWiley journal
content

17. Taylor & Francis: SAGE Publications:
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 17
Results so far: Some successes!
» A three year pilot offsetting
system running from January
2015 to December 2017.The
offsetting agreement offers
discounted article processing
charges via a voucher system
determined by expenditure on
subscriptions
» UK institutions which subscribe
to the SAGE Premier collection
continue to receive a significant
discount on Gold OA fees in
hybrid titles.The discounted
article processing charge is
currently reduced to £200

18. The work still to be done: data collections and monitoring
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 18
AggregatedAPC and subscription data for 20 UK HEIs
Number of APCs
2013
Number of APCs
2014
APC expenditure
2013
APC expenditure
2014
Percentage
change
Total
1963 6059 £3,253,127 £9,042,753 278%
Publisher 1 343 1048 £ 702,412 £1,453,615 207%
Publisher 2 320 987 £ 86,671 £1,602,814 273%
Publisher 3 81 349 £154,231 £579,630 376%
Publisher 4 91 317 £122,981 £ 419,616 341%
Publisher 5 222 347 £241,739 £347,302 144%
Publisher 6 117 283 £218,600 £567,471 260%
Publisher 7 63 157 £ 145,403 £465,071 320%
Publisher 8 60 311 £ 117,481 £ 477,464 406%
Publisher 9 92 280 £ 164,519 £498,703 303%
Publisher 10 48 146 £ 78,991 £116,951 148%
Publisher 11 40 135 £55,244 £245,501 444%
Publisher 12 16 43 £31,191 £84,984 272%
Publisher 13 20 232 £ 16,426 £ 89,298 544%

19. » Systems should operate in the context of a transition to fully gold
open access and support that transition.To meet this principle, a
system should be inclusive, remove barriers (both to authors and
their institutions) to open access and ensure that all the outputs of
a subscribing institutions are immediately open on publication
under licences and other conditions which meet funders’ mandates
and other requirements
» Systems should ensure that publishers do not charge the same
institutions twice, through the payment of subscriptions and the
payment ofAPCs
Define and publish the principles of offset systems
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 19

20. » Offset systems should not be restricted to institutions that
subscribe to large collections of journals (the big deal) but should
also apply to all institutions that subscribe to individual journals
with a hybrid OA offering from a publisher
» Systems should apply, at the level of each subscribing institution,
to ensure that the cost incurred by each institution for scholarly
publishing is contained.This does not preclude publishers from
also applying global reductions in the cost of subscriptions in
respect of increasing volumes of open access publications in hybrid
journals
Define and publish the principles of offset systems
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 20

21. » Systems should operate on a “cash basis” and avoid the additional
administration and work involved in handling vouchers,
particularly if those vouchers have an expiry date. Where an offset
system does operate on the basis of vouchers, they must be
available to the institution (which processes the transactions)
rather than to individual authors
Define and publish the principles of offset systems
09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 21

22. 09/03/2015 Jisc Digital Festival, 9-10 March 2015, ICC Birmingham 22
.. And of course negotiate
offset agreements with
more publishers this year…

23. Find out more…
Contact…
Except where otherwise noted, this
work is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND
Lorraine Estelle
Jisc
Lorraine.Estelle@jisc.ac.uk