Marketing Open Access programmes and publisher case studies

Caroline Sutton, Co-Action Publishing

In the final afternoon session at The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access, Caroline Sutton from Co-Action Publishing talked about marketing. They have seven employees publishing 34 journals with most income coming through APCs. For them, Open Access equals free access with re-use under a CC BY licence to keep it simple and easy to use.

Marketing channels are similar to subscription publishing. Promotional activities are run in conjunction with conferences. They have outreach to libraries, social media activities, email campaigns, etc. To some extent they are seeking to meet the same needs: access to peer reviewed literature and a publication outlet. But she believes that OA and hybrid journals are two very different products.

Open Access is knowledge as a network; knowledge as infrastructure; Open Access as a key infrastructural element. It's about creating connectivity within this network. Traditional publishing recognises knowledge as property. One of the biggest challenges in OA publishing is to get your head around the non-proprietary mindset around content. Sutton believes she acts as a midwife trying to get content out into the world. They keep this in mind when developing marketing strategy. But they also have to keep in mind where they make money (subscription income versus APCs). Sutton feels that the hybrid approach contradicts these two views.

At Co-Action, their customer groups are researchers, funders, institution/library, others (practitioners, political leaders, patients, citizens, journalists, etc). They consider consumers of content (reader) and contributors to content (author). In subscription publishing, the key market is the institution/library as you sell subscriptions to them. The researcher as reader is also important to drive usage to help secure renewals. There is also some interest in the 'Others' category.

With OA publishing the researcher as author is central to publishing: to buy the service and submit papers and then to recommend to others. They also provide a lot of services post publication. As publishers they have had to rethink what their role is. What do they contribute? They need to communicate this in the marketing. With the hybrid model the Funder is the primary target group, but there is also a lot of work with other groups.

One final question that Sutton posed was is advocacy marketing? Why have some OA publishers engaged in advocacy? She believes they had to go to market and make their presence felt. Have we seen advocacy in the marketing content of hybrid models? She concluded they have to be careful with their email marketing as predatory publishers spamming research communities has created a bad reputation for all.

The final session included brief case studies from a variety of publishers.

Nicola Gulley

Nicola Gulley, Editorial Director at IOP Publishing outlined how they researched what the best model would be that worked for their research communities. The findings indicated that the hybrid model was the best option.

What they have seen so far is a similar pattern that they have seen in existing journals. In the first quarter of 2014 there was increased uptake in hybrid. Gulley also noted increased interest in the business model from researchers. The big message was - and continues to be - flexibility in the model is key.

Hazel Newton

Hazel Newton, Head of Author Services in the Open Research division at Nature Publishing Group/Palgrave Macmillan reflected on how the wholesale application of the STEM approach to Open Access in relation to the humanities and social sciences (HSS) had worried the research community. There were also concerns about quality and lack of choice. Researchers felt bamboozled by CC options.

In their 2013 author survey, 84% said they would publish OA if the best or most appropriate journal was OA. 68% thought their specific area of interest would benefit from OA journals. Interdisciplinarity is an exciting area in research and funders are increasingly thinking about it. However, the smallest area for funding is in HSS.

As a result they are launching Palgrave Communications later in 2014. Offering choice spanning humanities and social sciences it will champion interdisciplinary research. It will be about quality and furthering the discipline, not just methodologically sound. There are more than 80 international editorial board members. There will be no restrictions on the length of papers and licences will be CC BY (but alternative licences are available). The APC is set at £750.

Kathryn Spiller

Kathryn Spiller, Head of Publishing at Bioscientifica recounted that when she took over, they launched an OA journal. Their societies wanted it, but it also reflected market demand for an interdisciplinary journal. They didn't intend to publish Open Access only products. Subsequently, everything they have done has been market driven and it so happens has all been OA.

They have doubled their publishing programme, all with OA products. A potential new approach they are exploring is for a niche, interdisciplinary project to secure grant or sponsor funding so it can be OA, as there is no research funding available.

Open Access: what does the librarian or customer community need and how do we install new plumbing?

John Norman

John Norman is Director for the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies at the University of Cambridge. He kicked off the afternoon sessions at The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access seminar.

At Cambridge, they conducted research into getting published. The experience doesn't split STEM/Humanities so much as single researcher (author) versus team research (multiple authors). Positive emotional states are associated with publication and impact. Negative emotional states are associated with making publishing decision, rejection and using publisher system.

Researchers are the ultimate customers. What do they need? Access to all important research relevant to their field. They don't always get it. What they want is access to be timely and convenient. And they want the same for the production of their articles.

When RCUK policy came into force, they took a service model of 'tell us about your article and we'll tell you what options are available.' They tried to keep it simple as it is so complex so they could take the burden of complexity off the author. It has proved to be a very popular approach.

The overall number of articles is c. 8,000 per annum. They have c. 500 publishers they deal with annually. From enquiries, they made 277 payments (invoices which they authorised). There were 72 articles submitted to the institutional repository. Interestingly, 40% of articles had some sort of publishing problem and 296 articles were available in a satisfactory form for RCUK at 4 April 2014. There were 364 APCs authorised; £724k committed; with an average APC c. £1800. Full data on Cambridge's APC payments is available on figshare).

They find it most helpful to use a diagram of the publishing value chain to explain to authors (article submission; initial review by publisher / article rejected; peer review / article accepted, Copyright Transfer Agreement signed / Article rejected; publishing / typesetting / copyediting / article published; public review / withdrawal, modification, altmetrics.) There is no doubt in Norman's mind that the Version of Record is considered more important by authors.

Multiple mandates to comply with can be tricky

The complexity of understanding multiple funder information shouldn't be underestimated. They average around 30 minutes per enquiry for their team.

One example is an article that acknowledges funding from BBSRC and the British Heart Foundation. The relevant Open Access policies are HEFCE, BBSRC, BHF, publisher and institution. That's five different sets of mandates to comply with, some of which are contradictory.

What would help? Simple, unambiguous, machine readable published information from publishers on key elements of an OA option.

• Version: are we talking about the publishers Version of Record or the Author Accepted Manuscript (and can we limit options to these two). 
• Licence: can we make explicit the licence options that apply to the article and limit the range (CC useful for this)? 
• Embargo: make explicit a single embargo in months from known publication date. 
• Price: it may be free, but does the price exclude tax for each version/licence combination? 

Some simple things publishers can do to help libraries (John's wish list) are a notification to the institution that an author has had an article accepted. Provide a free print copy of accepted article version in PDF form on acceptance and a free print copy of accepted article version in PDF form with licence.

Norman's final point was don't forget the reader. Creative Commons licences express permissions in a way the reader can easily understand.

Jisc's Neil Jacobs

Neil Jacobs from Jisc talked about 're-plumbing' infrastructure. It needs to be more flexible and scaleable in a time when universities and funders have new roles. What do universities need to know? Questions such as how do I know if author papers have been submitted to journals? What authors have published? What have we paid for APCs? Have we complied with funder policies? What are our financial liabilities?

He reflected on the complexity in the publishing content cycle and metadata requirements. It is not sufficiently scaleable or accessible. If you take standards and identifiers, there are some clear gaps including Publisher and APC identifiers.

• Researchers - ORCID
• Organisations - CASRAI OrgID working group
• Funders - FundRef
• Publishers - ?
• Journals - ISSN
• Articles - CrossRef, NISO OA metadata, NISO/ALPSP versions, V40A
• Journal OA policies - Sherpa-RoMEO
• Funder OA policies - Sherpa-Juliet, ROARMAP, Melibea
• Repositories - OpenDOAR, ISSN ROAD?
• Licences - ONIX-PL, Creative Commons
• COUNTER, (P)IRUS
• APCs - ?

Other emerging areas for standards and identifiers are research data and software. In the future, there will likely be a requirement for relationships such as attribution, contribution, affiliation and citation. Jacobs closed with a mention for the OA Implementation Group's guide to Gold for Open Access for Learned Societies.

Setting up Open Access policies and the different business models

Vicky Gardner from Taylor & Francis

The second half of the morning at The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access seminar covered practical implementation issues for setting up internal policies. Vicky Gardner, Open Access Publisher at Taylor & Francis, described 'the third age of publishing' as subscription, site licence and OA. There is the increasing influence of funders and policy makers and changing roles for libraries and publishers.

What does it mean? Operational challenges include:

• increasing granularity with article-level workflows.
• increased variation
• APC mechanisms
• implications for subscription business (conversion to full gold) OA would render many journals unsustainable
• anticipating OA policies and mandates - impact on institutional processes
• internal and external reporting
• cost.

Questions to ask yourself when implementing Open Access include: Do we hold publication until payment is received? Should we offer multiple APCs? How much information do we provide to authors? How can we consistently capture data for reporting?

Underlying considerations for consistently capturing data have a cross-industry element (FundRef, CrossMark, Prospect, NISO standards). There is classification (research funder vs APC funder), accuracy of data inputs (eg APC funding). You also need to consider how the data might be used (future proofing): it takes investment. And don't forget about past articles. With embargoes do you increase (will it protect subscriptions? Link to article half lives?). Should you decrease? (But some think you can't put genie back in the bottle... and what is the value of the version of record?)

Areas to consider with waivers include whether they are regional (corresponding author, offer only on full? What about local titles?) or no questions asked (is this sustainable? It allows those in genuine hardship to publish.)

Considerations for double dipping

• Global offset - equitable to subscribers, but difficult to calculate.
• Local offset - can accommodate in bulk deals. Equitable to those investing in OA. Is there granularity? Can be difficult to calculate.
• Top up model - avoids double dipping issue. Maintains the subscription market.

Thinking about licence choice

• How many?
• Which ones?
• What do authors want?
• What do funders want?
• Subject differentials?
• Permissions and third party content.

What are the lessons learned? Flexibility is key: sometimes a small tweak is all it takes. You need to engage with many different departments, editors, societies, librarians, funders. Make sure to use the talent in your business. Accept that you don't have all the answers - new workflows won't be right straightaway, strategic planning can only anticipate future developments.

We're all on a learning curve - manual workarounds are easy to implement in the short term and more practical in many senses than immediate investment in automation. Keeping staff informed about OA developments is just as important as external communications. One size does not fit all - there are many different preoccupations, perspectives and opinions, not just funder, policy maker, publisher. Consultation is key.

It is early days and the market is immature. This relates to APC intermediaries, HEI and publisher knowledge, and the take up of OA by researchers. Internal workflows are short to medium term. Change and complexity will be constant. And it is not just about research, also think about grey literature. But remember, OA is scalable.

The Royal Society's Phil Hurst

Phil Hurst from The Royal Society provided an overview of the different business models. At The Royal Society, their subscription model dates back to c1800. Originally, RS Fellows (400) received copies as part membership dues (no opt out). There were 300 on general sale through the Society's bookseller, and the Society received income, minus fees and expenses. External sales did not recoup the cost of printing. Only in recent years has the subscription model become more profitable.

Now? They use a subscription and green OA model. The institution or individual pays a regular fee for access to content, it is free to submit articles, but access is only available to subscribers. The advantages are that it is a proven model and infrastructure; the subscription supply chain is relatively efficient; there is no processing of APCs. The disadvantages are that the dissemination of content depends on budget availability. There is more content, but stagnant library budgets are a challenge. While it is relatively easy to manage, they still need people or agents to develop new business. Green OA requires repository infrastructure and it can be a challenge to get authors to deposit post prints.

Hybrid gold OA is relatively easy to implement. You retain the subscription income and it can be a transition to full OA as authors choose preferred publication model. However, there is potential for double dipping. It can be difficult to provide subscription discounts in a granular way and it is not always compliant with OA funders/mandates. Practical considerations include setting the price, collecting payments and a transparent pricing mechanism. At The Royal Society they have 'no fee, no free' model, but authors can retrospectively convert to OA.

Pure gold OA is a model where cost scales with submissions. It can lead to a more effective market (cost competition) with greater dissemination of content and potentially faster/higher citations. However, funding sources are not always available and quality and income are in conflict. Predatory publishers hinder OA reputation and can undermine authors' trust. Practical considerations include the need to collect a greater number of payments and the need to promote online payment (by credit card). The customer (author) will often not fund payment, so you need to demonstrate quality.

OA membership is where authors from member institutions receive a discount on pure or hybrid OA. This can take the form of a supporter or pre-pay (eg PMC, Hindawi) or postpay approach. The Royal Society has an OA 'supporter' membership. The benefits are that authors receive 25% discount on APCs, it increases research awareness about options, provides a customised institutional web page and is a cost-effective flat annual fee. Practical considerations include linking the author with institution, dealing with multi-authored papers: which institution gets the discount? You need a new system, have to set the price and while it is proving cost-effectiveness, they still need sales people. Other examples include PeerJ, IOP Publishing OA funding pilot in Austria and the RSC gold for gold programme.

The Open Access landscape and the challenges of hybrid programmes

Michael Jubb kicks off proceedings

Michael Jubb opened The Mechanics and Reality of Open Access seminar with a handy overview. A contemporary definition of the purpose of scholarly communications was published by The Royal Society in their Science as an Open Enterprise report. They outlined this as

• discoverable
• accessible
• intellegible
• assessable
• usable.

Key announcements in the history of Open Access development include Budapest (2002), Bethseda (2003) and Berlin (2003). The latter included an extension of what is covered to include original scientific research results, raw data and metadata, source materials, digital representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material.

Increasingly the terms 'gratis' or 'libre' are used to reflect actual practice in Open Access. Both have free online access, but 'Libre' includes additional usage rights.

Jubb cited the results of the Elsevier, International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base, 2013, a Report for BIS in identifying uptake levels for routes to Open Access.

Global uptake:

• fully OA journals with APCs 5.5%
• fully OA journals no APCs 4.2%
• hybrid journals 0.5%
• delayed free access journals 1.0%
• pre-print repositories 6.4%
• accepted ms repositories 5.0%

UK take-up

• fully OA journals with APCs 5.9%
• fully OA journals no APCs 1.2%
• hybrid journals 2.7%
• delayed free access journals 4.2%
• pre-print repositories 7.4%
• accepted ms repositories 11.6%

It is interesting to note the biggest differential - for example the jump in hybrid take-up from 0.5% globally to 2.7% in the UK.

Three key sets of policies in the UK are from RCUK, Funding councils and REF and the Wellcome Trust. In Europe there is the pilot in FP7, the policy for Horizon 2020. In the USA, the NIH since 2008 ask for a deposit in PMC with a 12 month embargo and more recently the OSTP memorandum was announced.

Key issues include licensing, embargoes, costs and revenues. Jubb noted that the Björk and Solomon report Developing an Effective market for Open Access Article Processing Charges and how it suggested that the hybrid journal market is dysfunctional as hybrid journals APCs are on average much higher than full OA.

Wiley-Blackwell's Liz Ferguson

Liz Ferguson is Publishing Solutions Director at Wiley-Blackwell. She provided an overview of the challenges of hybrid Open Access publishing and the transition to a full OA programme, and noted that the world of hybrid journals can be confusing, discussions can be heated about it.

Ferguson described hybrids as subscription journals that offer authors the opportunity to make articles openly available for a fee.

It was a model started c.2000 by the Entomological Society in America and has grown ever since.

In 2011, the top 5 publishers by number of hybrid journals and articles was as follows:

• Springer - 1360 journals; 7243 articles
• Elsevier - 1160 journals; 1014 articles
• Wiley - 726 journals; 596 articles
• Taylor & Francis - 577 journals; 153 articles
• Sage - 177 journals; 37 articles
• OUP - 109 journals; 882 articles

At Wiley, they initially had life and health sciences supporting hybrid. There was a big escalation in 2012 (driven by RCUK policy) which had a big effect on the humanities and social sciences community. It raised awareness of Open Access. and proved to have a 'carrot and stick' effect: 12 or 24 months with Gold option, 6 or 12 months without. This drove hybrid publishing due to concern about subscription income. Ferguson reflected on whether growth was driven by an increasing number of outlets, but felt probably not. In 2013 the increased number of hybrid journals have seen some sort of hybrid activity - c. 5 articles per title.

Wiley regularly survey their authors and one of the areas they ask them about is what they choose to do with licensing. They asked authors who are not mandated to take a particular route which licensing option they would prefer: 50% said CC-BY-NC-ND, 28% CC-BY and 22% CC-BY-NC. It was interesting to note that half have chosen to go for the most restrictive licences. It is not known why. It could be down to lack of understanding or a desire to protect content.

Are hybrids a transitional model? This year they have seen hybrid activity of up to 18% on journals which is much higher than anticipated. Challenges associated with them include a rapid transition to new models, CC-BY and commercial revenues and financial transparency. With green running alongside there are issues around versions, embargo periods, depositions and enforcing/enabling policies.

There is often a lot of confusion as to what is expected with hybrid and publishers need to redevelop and refine systems to provide a good service. Financial transparency is key. Double dipping (money from subscribers, money from authors) is an issue - whether perceived or real. Currently, hybrid money is low, but this is changing, so it is important to deal with the issue clearly and transparently. There is a need to do this because 1) it is ethical; 2) for clarity; and 3) it will lead to a more sustainable future in the long run. Ferguson noted that offsetting against subscriptions may not be scaleable if gold is adopted more widely.

So what is the outlook for hybrids? The offer to authors remains compelling, hybrid OA continues to grow (so does subscription content), but the financial challenges of a mixed model remain and there will be further transitions to full gold OA.

Open Access: Principles and Practice for Learned Societies

Kathryn Spiller at ALPSP's recent Open Access seminar

What are the guiding principles and practical actions a learned society should consider when it approaches open access models?

With the implementation of new funding guidelines from RCUK and the Wellcome Trust looming this spring, this has been a pre-occupation for Kathryn Spiller from BioScientifica and ALPSP Chief Executive Audrey McCulloch.

Both feel the learned publishing community needs to come together to discuss what particular issues need to be considered for not-for-profit scholarly publishers.

Too often the debate is polarised between ideological extremes. But, as the recent ALPSP seminar on open access Beyond the Rhetoric clearly illustrated, there is an increasing range of issues to consider. Whether you publish in the arts, humanities, social sciences or STM; have open access or hybrid journals; or are considering best steps for monographs and reference.

(You can read Kathryn's reflections on launching a new open access journal here in January's Research Information. There are a number of posts from Beyond the Rhetoric seminar here on the ALPSP blog.)

This challenge has prompted ALPSP to collaborate with Kathryn to try to tackle some of the issues. The ALPSP Open Access Workshop: Guiding Principles and Practical Action for Learned Societies will be held on Friday 1 February at the Royal College of Pathologists. Part ask-an-expert, part peer-to-peer discussion, the workshop will bring together a range of speakers with particular insight and expertise.

Confirmed speakers include Graham Taylor from the Publishers Association, Lucy Robinson, Journals Publisher at Sage, Jim Milne, Managing Director at RSC Publishing, and Sally Hardy, Chief Executive of the Regional Studies Association.

There will be a panel discussion and scene setting, but unlike our previous events, we will also include facilitated round table discussions with colleagues from learned societies to discuss guiding principles. ALPSP will take notes and these will be written up for all members and attendees.

Places are strictly limited and are going fast. Book online here.

Is the journal brand dead? Marketing in an open access world

Tim Redding, Nature Publishing, talks journal brands

In November, ALPSP held one of our most successful seminars in 2012 - Beyond the Rhetoric: New opportunities in open access. Tim Redding, Head of Marketing for BioPharma, Life and Physical Sciences at Nature Publishing provided some insights into branding.

He articulated access to research is universal  and it is the top tier journals with large circulations that have lost out. With all journals, whatever their tier, you now have to woo authors. The circulation argument no longer works. There are a number of factors that need to be taken care of when considering your organisation or journal brand.

Article level metrics are vital. Ideally you will have a metrics button on each article. You need to focus on service: from time to publication through to ease of submission and discoverability. Reviewers and editorial boards are advocates for the journal. They are just as key as authors, so treat them accordingly. Happy reviewers are needed for rapid publication and to meet authors' service level expectations. Deal with them fairly and efficiently and consider recognition of their contribution. Frontiers puts reviewer names on papers giving more credit to what the reviewers are contributing to the scientific process. Common courtesy doesn't go amiss: send thank you letters and acknowledgements.

Redding also outlined the difficulties with hybrid titles. You have to consider transparency of amount of content that is paid for and ensure you have fair pricing. On the flip side, you need to be clear about cost per download or cost per local citation. Ensure your business model is more fluid than before and consultation and transparency with libraries is paramount.

There are particular challenges with visibility. How can you get papers seen in mega journals? How do you ensure standout and how do authors reach outside their niche? Papers are seen if there is a network for them, regardless of how interesting or quirky they are.

Tools to use for visibility should include email. It is still powerful, if used wisely. Content marketing is good for authors and helps define the journal. Give authors tools to help themselves e.g. sharing boxes and social tools. Empower the author to promote their paper. Give them an email template and make it easy for them to share.

Unsurprisingly, Redding is a big advocate of using social media.  They have the following number of accounts for science engagement at Nature:

• 40 Twitter
• 24 Facebook
• 8 blogs
• 6 MySpace
• 8 LinkedIn

Social media provides tools for visibility. They received 120,000 'Likes' on Facebook for nature.com. As a network, Facebook can be the second largest referrer after Google. While it is a forum for engagement and comment, you need to keep an eye on it and actally engage, so don't just pop it up there and forget about it.

Social media works best when marketing (key messages, sales) and editorial (credibility) work together. It allows you to gain feedback and insight into your authors and readers. While audience can be vocal, you can turn this to your advantage by embracing it, and not ignoring it. With Twitter, autofeeds work, but nothing compares to editorial engagement.

Infographics: here's one he prepared earlier

But what kind of content works best? Pictures and video can help you and increase interaction on Facebook. This type of content encourages sharing which can go viral. Infographics can help to explain complex information and can help your content standout from the clutter. Good content can act as a talking point.

Paid search is worth considering as it is useful to grow audience quickly and cost effectively - particularly before indexing. Facebook drives page likes, Google AdWords is good for directing traffic and StumbleUpon is less than $0.10 per click. Also consider Reddit, Digg and LinkedIn.

Tracking can be difficult as there is no direct correlation, unlike subscriptions. But by tracking submission rate against marketing campaigns, you can show trends, albeit with a time lag. A guide to authors page views is also a good indicator of interest.

All these techniques form part of a long game. Build your brand and build your registrations; build web traffic and submissions will come. Use author marketing to full effect: survey all authors to find out why they submitted to your journal. This will not only help you define your brand, but will also provide good insight into your service levels as they are part of the author/academic/research community's most critical touch point with your brand.

Walter Landor, the father of modern branding, stated that brand is not just a name and logo, it has evolved. It is not just company telling you what the product is. Customers define brand just as much as company. Is the journal brand dead? Are journal brands still relevant? Why don't researchers just publish on WordPress? Redding believes it is about trust, reach and discoverability:

• brands give trust and authority and quickly allow you to identify content you need
• brands help authors ensure that the audience reading their research is the right one and valued
• brands give papers Google juice and discoverability.

He closed by saying in an online open access world, brands are still critical and far from dead. Long live the journal brand.

Is there a role for libraries in open access?

Deborah Shorley, Director of Library Services at Imperial College, provided an illuminating overview of the impact of open access developments on the library at the recent Beyond the Rhetoric: new opportunities in open access seminar. Current challenges for the library community are manifold. There is an evolving role for libraries. Looking ahead, does open access offer a dead end or an open road for libraries?

At Imperial, their collection is 98% digital due to the subjects taught at the university. They unashamedly have very few books left in the collection. They have fantastic feedback in the student survey and from the institution, yet they don't 'own' anything in a traditional sense. Shorley even went so far as to propose that the concept of libraries and collections has gone. A move away from big deals and the demise of print, combined with the development of powerful discovery tools, is shrinking the traditional role of libraries.

With green open access, there is a rise in institutional repositories. This in turn creates a sophisticated metadata demand and the need for expert data management. Shorley pointed out that librarians are quite good at metadata. If they are sensible, they will grasp it, do it better and in new ways. With more journals saying they won't publish unless underlying data is open, there is an opportunity for librarians to help make sense of this.

With gold open access, there may be a role for librarians managing article processing charges (APCs). They are in a good position to give advice to researchers and understand budgetary constraints. At Imperial, they have a small budget - they are going to manage the transitional funding of c.£700k from RCUK - to facilitate the transition.

Is this a role that librarians could adopt in future? At Imperial, they have two people advising the researchers and administering the cash. This is something they are keen to keep: after all, librarians tend to be very good at processes, systems and being honest! Based on these insights, in an open access world, new responsibilities for libraries might focus around advocacy, bibliometrics, and in-house publishing. New skills will be critical to this approach.

For Shorley, the Finch report is fine as far as it goes: it has encouraged librarians to think about things differently, and has spurred RCUK to put its money where its mouth is. But she doesn't see how APCs solve anything. They put the money in the same hands, but in a different place. There must be a different way for universities to invest their money and what they do with how they publish their research.

Shorley closed with a note of caution: in the years of transition, it will be expensive, uncertain, disruptive, but well worth the pain. Science makes things better and this is a better way of doing science. Publishing skills are publishing skills. It's where they sit that's interesting. Whatever happens, they should be used to publish well.

Open Access in the Humanities: the need for a balanced approach

Thomas Parisot, Institutional Relations Officer at Cairn.info, discussed open access in the humanities at the Beyond the Rhetoric: New opportunities in open access seminar.

He provided an international perspective including some interesting statistics from France where peer review journals in humanities and social sciences are worth 17 million euros each year; collective works of research 5 million euros; research books 60
 million euros; essays 111 million euros; general interest journals 5 million; and the average annual income of a journal is 8,500 euros.

With perhaps the best line of the day - 'open access, not open excess' - Thomas outlined the key challenges for the French market in terms of OA.

The big debate is around whether or not one size fits all. The article life cycle in humanities and social sciences is different to the sciences. with only 18 % of the interest raised in research institutions related to articles published the last 12 months. This difference between disciplines should prompt concerted reflection and actions among stakeholders. There have been on-going discussions with policy makers in France to support publication diversity, and an OA in HE
working group was launched in Belgium, including publishers and libraries which hopes to define a reasonable mandate policy in open repositories.

He outlined the challenge of definition: what is a publicly funded research? If a philosopher works in a public university, but also, from time to time, for specialised newspapers, is an essayist writing an article in a peer-review journal and all this is based on several years of reflection and discussions with colleagues. If he publishes a book on the same subject one year later, what is it open access to? How can you define the access? It is difficult to assess what can be publicly funded or not. Another issue when trying to explain the differences between the humanities and social sciences when compared to STM to policy makers is the lack of data. They are trying to see what kind of data they can share - and also research and develop - to inform the decisions being made.

They are developing a range of new initiatives at Cairn including an international edition which will provide an interface in English enabling non-French speaking scholars to discover content of interest published in French. A platform has been launched currently, Heloise, developed in partnership between the French publishers association and CNRS, to inform authors of embargo periods defined by French publishers in the humanities and social sciences. They have also joined with a range of partners including a national radio station to debate the issue and raise awareness with an event planned for 15th February 2013.

Models can be probably be adapted but time, data, effort and caution is needed when it comes to the fragile economy of publications in the Humanities.

How to Launch an Open Access Journal

Kathryn Spiller, Head of Publishing at BioScientifica Publishing, kicked off the seminar Beyond the Rhetoric: New opportunities in open access this morning. She provided a step-by-step guide on how they launched their new open access journal, Endocrine Connections: An Interdisciplinary Open Access Journal.

BioScientifica Publishing publishes biomedical and life science journals on behalf of client societies. In 2011, their portfolio included: Journal of Endocrinology; Molecular Endocrinology; Endocrinology-Related Cancer; European Journal of Endocrinology; and Reproduction.

Their open access policies in 2011 were:

• All journals offer OA option - £2000
• Half price APC if corresponding author's institution subscribes (they proactively told them)
• Where funders mandate OA they insist on APE payment
• 12 month embargo
• License retains commercial rights
• Low take up - range 2-7% of content across the portfolio

During 2011, the Society for Endocrinology and the European Society for Endocrinology strongly felt they needed to launch a new open access journal. Working with TBI Communications, they undertook a programme of market research. This included comprehensive market research of the target community; identification of a real gap in the market; identifying true USPs that are meaningful to that community; levels of significant investment; and no impact factor.

They also wanted to explore non-traditional areas such as:

• how researchers now take on a third role: not only author and reader, but also paying customer
• the willingness and ability to pay for OA
• the strengths and weaknesses that an OA journal can bring.

Their primary market research objectives were:

• to identify the gap and define the scope of the new journal
• assess the value their brand might add to a new journal
• define criteria for naming it and understand attitudes to key terms
• assess factors most important to the community in deciding where to submit articles

Their secondary market research objectives were:

• to understand awareness of - and attitudes to - OA in the community
• to understand current costs of publishing paid by authors in the community
• to understand the level of APC that would be acceptable and would be funded

They delivered the research to just under 50,000 names including approximately 4,000 members of both societies and there were 904 (1.8%) participants. The majority were from Europe and North America, but the rest of the world were also represented. Most respondents were based at a university or hospital and there was a good spread of researchers working in different specialisms related to endocrinology with an equal number of clinician and scientists.

Key findings: positioning
They identified a gap in the market for a broad scope journal linking endocrinology with intersecting disciplines. The two society brands had positive associations for than half of respondents, even though the majority weren't members, but the publisher brand had neutral response. The word 'endocrinology had very positive associations for most respondents, but the word 'hormone' had negative connotations!

Author preferences
The key factors influencing respondents' choice of where to publish were ranked as follows:

1. reputation of journal
2. impact factor
3. relevance of publication to your work
4. speed of publication
5. free access to your work
6. reptutation of associated society
7. reputation of publishers
8. funding body

Attitudes to OA
78% had some or good awareness of OA as a new model for publishing research articles (the lowest response was in Latin America and Asia). 44% had published in an OA journal, 26% of which had published frequently or occasionally. Of those with experience of publishing in OA, 47% strongly support the principle, but have trouble paying fees. 39% support it and are preprepared to pay reasonalbe fees. PLoS One was the most popular OA journal.

Cost of publishing
72% had experience of paying page charges and almost half of those said the average cost of page charges per paper is between $101 and $500. Over 50% of these authors fund charges from grant agencies with just over 30% funding them personally. The range of journals where people have paid to publish OA is large, as is the price range.

APC positioning
When participants were asked what a reasonable APC would be 20% said it is not acceptable to charge, 41% stated below $500, and only 11% stated over $1000. Of those who fund fees personally, 44% believe under $500 to be fair and 24% believe $501-$1000 to be fair.

Adopted model
As a results of the research they adopted an online only CC-BY licence. The full price for an APE is £700 with a launch offer of the first 200 published at half price. They are cascading articles rejected by the Societies' high impact journals and these submissions account for 50% of submissions consistently throughout the year. They are also undertaking marketing for direct submissions.

Achievements

• very short timeline of 6 months for launch
• response to the first announcement resulted in 700+ signing up for more information
• 3490 signed up for alerts
• monthly enewsletter has 40% open rate
• 58 submissions in the first six months
• two issues of seven articles with five more articles online, in first six months
• average receipt to accept times of 27 days

Success factors

• user-led research to define clear gap in the market, name and scope of product
• owned by two prestigious societies
• being agile - from sign off to launch in six months
• mixed model of cascaded papers and direct submissions
• a new product that starts with our core market
• significant investment in launch showing measurable ROI

Interestingly, only 22% of those offered a transfer have submitted when their research suggested 60% would. The acceptance rate is 25% where they had budgeted for 70%. The key lesson they have learnt is not to be afraid to take risks and invest in new products. It is a far greater risk to do nothing.