Paying Author Fees for "Open Access" Publication: Two Models

Many models for funding and supporting greater and more open access to journal articles are emerging, as institutions and publishers seek to find the ideal balance of rights, costs, and access. One main development of the last few years has been emergence of "author-pays" models of open access publishing. That is, for a fee up front from the author or the author's institution, publishers will allow free access to the article even to non-subscribers.

That much is fact. What I see happening now is the emergence of a new kind of institutional response.

The group of institutions (listed and linked below) is stepping up to pay for the author fees for the faculty and researchers in their institutions. Typically they help those authors (1) who don't have grant funding or other external source to tap, (2) with a capped fee at a certain standard amount, and (3) when the author agrees to ensure that there will be un-embargoed open access posting of the article as a result. In some cases, these funds have come direct from library budgets, in others from a partnership between library and e.g. ITS or a vice provost for research. Though a couple of these may be in their second year of operation, it's fair to say that they are still pilot projects, experiments in the possible. Institutions where we know this to be happening include:

• University of Wisconsin: http://oscp.library.wisc.edu/response.html#libraries
  
• Amsterdam University (with 150,000 Euro/year set aside budgeted): http://www.uba.uva.nl/open_access/publish.cfm/
  
• UC Berkeley: a pilot program sponsored by the UL and Vice Chancellor for Research: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/brii/
  
• University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Library (subsidies for those without grants): http://www.hsl.unc.edu/Collections/ScholCom/OAFundAnnounce.cfm
  
• University of Nottingham UK (not out of periodical budget): http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/about/openaccessfund

Those models work "retail;" that is, by funding articles and authors on a case-by-case basis.

A second, "wholesale" (and far more intriguing) model is underway in the type of contract that has been agreed between Springer Verlag and the libraries of the Max Planck (Germany) Institute. As part of this new 2008 site license contract with Springer, MPI has negotiated agreement that all MPI authors will have their Springer Open Choice fees completely waived. Springer is said to have made similar arrangement with two other European libraries (one in the Netherlands and another in Germany).

What this suggests is that consortia and libraries increasingly will be asking for similar language in their license renewals. The downstream implication is that whatever business model underlay the shift to author fees will be strained and revised to accommodate the incorporation of the fee arrangement in a larger site license conversation. In the early stages, by waiving such fees, Springer may have a competitive advantage with authors, but if or as other publishers agree to similar terms, this advantage will be short-lived. And if a critical mass of publishers agrees to such fee waivers, then what next?