{"id":532,"date":"2010-08-06T17:19:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-06T21:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/?p=532"},"modified":"2013-03-17T16:55:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:55:05","slug":"how-much-does-a-cope-compliant-open-access-fund-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2010\/08\/06\/how-much-does-a-cope-compliant-open-access-fund-cost\/","title":{"rendered":"How much does a COPE-compliant open-access fund cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n
\"Tightrope<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Tightrope walker, sculpture, Berlin, 2008. Photo from beezerella at flickr.com. Used by permission.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

The short answer? \u00a0Almost nothing.<\/p>\n

The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity<\/a> is a statement of commitment to “the\u00a0timely establishment<\/a> of\u00a0durable mechanisms<\/a> for\u00a0underwriting<\/a> reasonable<\/a> publication charges<\/a> for articles written by its\u00a0faculty<\/a> and published in\u00a0fee-based<\/a> open-access journals<\/a> and\u00a0for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds<\/a>.” Some institutions who were considering signing on to the compact at its launch<\/a> held off because of a worry that it might cost a lot of money at a time when library budgets are under phenomenal pressure. I had predicted that the costs would be minimal in my PLoS Biology paper proposing the compact<\/a>. There, I said<\/p>\n

By design, the overall cost to a university of implementing the compact, in the short term, would be quite small. Hybrid open-access fees are explicitly eschewed, and true open-access fees tend to be found at present in just those areas of scholarship where grant support is most prevalent, reducing the underwriting load on the university substantially. Rough estimates based on the experience of the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative fall in the range of tens of dollars per faculty member per year.<\/p>\n

But I can understand that some universities might have wanted to wait until there is some empirical evidence of this claim. That evidence is now available. Barbara DeFelice<\/a>, Director of the Digital Resources Program at Dartmouth Library has compiled some statistics from the COPE\u00a0signatory\u00a0institutions<\/a> about their OA fund expenditures, which she discussed at a recent ARL talk<\/a>. I used her statistics to calculate approximate costs per faculty member per year. The numbers reveal that the outlays are even more manageable than even I had estimated, perhaps by an order of magnitude. (I’ve made these numbers quite conservative by counting faculty conservatively and estimating that each article funded cost $1,500 dollars. The actual average seems to be somewhat less. As more data is collected, I’ll try to make it available.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Institution<\/th>\nMonths<\/th>\n# Funded<\/th>\nFunded\/year<\/th>\nFaculty size<\/th>\n$\/faculty\/year<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Berkeley<\/td>\n31<\/td>\n92<\/td>\n35.61<\/td>\n1582<\/td>\n$33.77<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Columbia<\/td>\n7<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n3.43<\/td>\n1377<\/td>\n$3.73<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cornell<\/td>\n11<\/td>\n3<\/td>\n3.27<\/td>\n1594<\/td>\n$3.08<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dartmouth<\/td>\n11<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n1.09<\/td>\n450<\/td>\n$3.64<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Harvard<\/td>\n11<\/td>\n1<\/td>\n1.09<\/td>\n1633<\/td>\n$1.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MSKCC<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n0<\/td>\n0.00<\/td>\n560<\/td>\n$0.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
MIT<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n0<\/td>\n0.00<\/td>\n1025<\/td>\n$0.00<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ottawa<\/td>\n8<\/td>\n25<\/td>\n37.50<\/td>\n1257<\/td>\n$44.75<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

For universities that run their OA funds in accordance with COPE recommendations (that is, no hybrid fees<\/a>, no grant-funded articles<\/a>), the costs come to not tens of dollars per faculty member per year, but single digit dollars. The outliers are Berkeley and Ottawa, both of which will cover hybrid fees (though Berkeley places tighter caps on fee per article) and will cover grant-funded articles (though they ask for grant funds to be used first).<\/p>\n

The bottom line is that the direct costs of running a COPE-compliant open-access fund are trivial, and the administrative costs of dealing with handfuls of requests are trivial as well. Cost should not be an impediment to setting up an open-access fund in this way. In particular, harangues about open-access funds amounting to throwing away large quantities of valuable dollars can please stop now. For instance,\u00a0Stevan Harnad likes to say things like<\/a> “COPE is based on the illusion that there is enough money available in institutions today to pay for OA publication in all the must-have journals \u2014 Nature, Science, the American Physical Society journals, and all the other top journals \u2014 while continuing to subscribe to those journals (and we don’t as yet have OA for their contents, so it’s premature to cancel).” He either misunderstands the compact or willfully misrepresents it, since COPE-compliant funds need not, should not, and generally do not pay publication fees for the subscription journals he lists. COPE does not support “double-dipping”.<\/a><\/p>\n

The reason that the costs of COPE-compliant open-access funds are so low is because demand for the funds is low because, in turn, there are very few quality OA journals charging publication fees, because, finally, to do so would be to put the journals at a systematic disadvantage in getting authors as compared to subscription journals that don’t charge fees. (This disadvantage is exactly what COPE is trying to remedy.)\u00a0Here is how the numbers break down. Of the 5,000 or so open-access journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals, only a hundred or two are of the\u00a0character\u00a0that these universities’ researchers are likely to publish in them. For example, only a hundred or so are indexed by Thomson ISI for impact factors. Of these, the majority don’t charge publication fees, so can’t\u00a0contribute\u00a0to OA fund demand. Those that do charge a fee are overwhelmingly in the life sciences where grant funding is widespread, hence they also don’t generate demand on the OA fund.<\/p>\n

If there is so little demand for an OA fund, why have it at all? \u00a0The goal of a COPE-compliant OA fund is not short term maximization of access to an institution’s output. (If it were, then hybrid fees would be appropriate to underwrite. But that goal can be accomplished much more cost-effectively by establishing good green open-access\u00a0policies.) Rather, the goal of COPE is to provide the basis for an alternative business model, should a large number of institutions similarly commit. \u00a0If a large number of institutions were to commit to the compact, publishers would have a viable business model through charging publication fees in a way that they do not now have.<\/p>\n

In essence, COPE is trying to establish a kind of safety net. \u00a0Safety nets are useful even when they are not used<\/em>. \u00a0Safety nets allow people to take risks that we want to promote. \u00a0A publisher changing its business model is incurring such a risk. \u00a0We, the universities and research funders, may need collectively to build a very big safety net (university by university, funder by funder) to convince a publisher to take that risk. But given that the cost of each of our pieces of the safety net is so incredibly low, it is worth keeping our pieces up and encouraging others to add their pieces, in the hope that a big enough net will encourage the publishers to take the risk to walk the tightrope from the subscription model to the publication fee model. If we are successful, demand for the OA funds will grow as publishers will flip business model to an OA publication fee basis, thereby freeing up funds to pay those fees. If we are not successful, at least the costs are negligible.<\/p>\n

(Thanks to Barbara DeFelice for collecting the data and making it available.)<\/p>\n

[Update 11\/16\/2011<\/strong>: I’ve added a post on how funding agencies might best set up their part of the safety net<\/a>.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tightrope walker, sculpture, Berlin, 2008. Photo from beezerella at flickr.com. Used by permission. The short answer? \u00a0Almost nothing. The Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity is a statement of commitment to “the\u00a0timely establishment of\u00a0durable mechanisms for\u00a0underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its\u00a0faculty and published in\u00a0fee-based open-access journals and\u00a0for which other institutions would not be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[618,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-access","category-scholarly-communication"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pLfN-8A","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":314,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2009\/09\/15\/harvards-new-open-access-fund\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":0},"title":"Harvard’s new open-access fund","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Tuesday, September 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Harvard's participation in the open-access compact is being managed by the Office for Scholarly Communication, which has set up an open-access fund\u2014the Harvard Open-Access Publishing Equity (HOPE) fund\u2014consistent with the compact. Through HOPE, Harvard will reimburse eligible authors for open-access processing fees. Initially, members of the four Harvard faculties\u2014Arts and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":56,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2009\/05\/27\/some-background-on-open-access\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":1},"title":"Some background on open access","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, May 27, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I assume that readers of the open access discussions on this blog are familiar with the state of play in the area, but just in case, here's some background. Peter Suber defines open access in his A Very Brief Introduction to Open Access as follows: \"Open-access (OA) literature is digital,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "meta"","block_context":{"text":"meta","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1552,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/10\/17\/guide-released-on-good-practices-for-university-open-access-policies\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":2},"title":"Guide released on good practices for university open-access policies","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, October 17, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm pleased to forward on the announcement that the Harvard Open Access Project has just released an initial version of a guide on \"good practices for university open-access policies\". It was put together by Peter Suber and myself with help from many, including Ellen Finnie Duranceau, Ada Emmett, Heather Joseph,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1533,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2012\/10\/08\/open-access-week-2012-at-harvard\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":3},"title":"Open Access Week 2012 at Harvard","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Monday, October 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"...set the default... Here's what's on deck at Harvard for Open Access Week 2012 (reproduced from the OSC announcement). From October 22 through October 28, Harvard University is joining hundreds of other institutions of higher learning\u00a0to celebrate\u00a0Open Access Week, a global event for the promotion of free, immediate online access\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":271,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2009\/08\/05\/new-paper-on-oa-in-plos-biology\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":4},"title":"New paper on OA in PLoS Biology","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, August 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"My paper on the \"open-access compact\" is now available from PLoS Biology and at my web site. An excerpt: Scholars write articles to be read\u2014the more access to their articles the better\u2014so one might think that the open-access approach to publishing, in which articles are freely available online to all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1789,"url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/2013\/07\/10\/ecumenical-open-access-and-the-finch-report-principles\/","url_meta":{"origin":532,"position":5},"title":"Ecumenical open access and the Finch Report principles","author":"Stuart Shieber","date":"Wednesday, July 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"...myopic... \"myopic\" image by flickr user haglundc used by permission. I was invited by the British Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences to write a piece on last year's report \"Accessibility, sustainability, excellence: How to expand access to research publications\" by the\u00a0Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "open access"","block_context":{"text":"open access","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/category\/scholarly-communication\/open-access\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532"}],"version-history":[{"count":58,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1136,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532\/revisions\/1136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/pamphlet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}