From offsetting to a publication based business model: The (potential) comeback of selection, individual prices and competition

Authors

  • Kai Geschuhn Max Planck Digital Library
  • Dirk Pieper Bielefeld University Library

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7557/5.3943

Abstract

Watch the VIDEO of the presentation.

In March 2016, the ESAC initiative brought together offsetting users from all over Europe to discuss principles and mechanisms of a new business model, currently referred to as offsetting (http://esac-initiative.org/activities/offsetting-workshop-2016/). Participants agreed upon a “Joint Understanding of Offsetting”. The document most importantly includes the claim for agreements to lead to a “pay as you publish” model, meaning that institutions should be billed only for those articles published by their authors rather than making prepayments or pay lump sums, which still include reading or access fees.

Subsequently, offsetting users like the Max Planck Digital Library, JISC, the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) or the Netherlands started using the Open APC Initiative to aggregate data from offsetting big deals (http://treemaps.intact-project.org/apcdata/offsetting/). The collection already provides insights on the allocation of offsetting publications over a publisher's journal portfolio, which allows predictions not only on the popularity of journals among researchers in terms of preferred places for publications, but also for a “pay-as-you-publish-model”. Currently the publication data from the Springer offsetting pilot participants (“Springer Compact”) show a distribution of publications over not even the half of Springer’s journal fleet.

The conference contribution analyses the data together with bibliometric information and subscription based usage statistics in order to draw conclusions for a truly publication based open access business model in terms of re-implementing individual choices made by authors, price sensitivity, price setting, and market competition. It will be discussed, how offsetting contributes to the desired large-scale open access transformation, as outlined by the Open Access 2020 initiative (http://oa2020.org/).

Author Biographies

Kai Geschuhn, Max Planck Digital Library

Kai holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science. At Max Planck Digital Library she works at the interface between license management and open access. She is part of the negotiating teams for Max Planck’s offsetting agreements and she promotes the OA2020, the INTACT project and the ESAC initiative aiming at the transition of the current subscription system to open access business models. Kai is coauthor of the MPDL whitepaper “Disrupting the subscription journals’ business model for the necessary large-scale transformation to open access” published in 2014. 

Dirk Pieper, Bielefeld University Library

Dirk Pieper is the Deputy Director at Bielefeld University Library and responsible for projects and innovation. Before that, he was for more than 10 years the Head of Media Department at Bielefeld UL. He holds a degree in political science and economics and is involved in several Open Access projects, like BASE, funding Open Access publications at Bielefeld University or INTACT.  He is also a member of several national and international boards and initiatives like "Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges" (ESAC) or the "EBSCO European Academic Advisory Board".

Downloads

Published

2016-10-19

How to Cite

Geschuhn, K., & Pieper, D. (2016). From offsetting to a publication based business model: The (potential) comeback of selection, individual prices and competition. Septentrio Conference Series, (1). https://doi.org/10.7557/5.3943

Issue

No. 1 (2016): The 11th Munin Conference on Scholarly Publishing 2016

Section

Presentations

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).