Björn Brembs

There is an interesting study out in the journal PNAS: "[Evaluating big
deal journal
bundles](https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/11/1403006111)". The
study details the disparity in negotiation skills between different US
institutions when haggling with publishers about subscription pricing.
For *Science Magazine*, John Bohannon [of "journal sting"
fame](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2013/10/science-magazine-rejects-data-publishes-anecdote/),
wrote a [news
article](https://news.sciencemag.org/economics/2014/06/how-much-did-your-university-pay-your-journals)
about the study, which did not really help him gain any respect back
from all that he lost with his ill-fated sting-piece. While the study
itself focused on journal pricing among US-based institutions,
Bohannon's news article, where one would expect a little broader
perspective than in the commonly more myopic original papers, fails to
mention that even the 'best' big deals are grossly overcharging the
taxpayer. Here is the figure of the article, apparently provided by the
PNAS authors:

[![Journal subscription
prices](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/si-JournalPricing.jpg){.aligncenter
.size-full .wp-image-588 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="600"
height="518"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/si-JournalPricing.jpg 600w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/si-JournalPricing-300x259.jpg 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"}](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/si-JournalPricing.jpg)

This graph shows that some universities pay more for subscriptions than
others. I'm not sure what exactly -130% is supposed to mean. I take it
that UMass didn't receive money from Springer, but still paid \$168,224.
So I take this graph to mean that there are differences of up to 200%
between what libraries are paying publishers, i.e, one university may
pay up to 200% on top of what another library is paying for the same
content, e.g. when one pays one million, another has to pay three. I'm
not entirely sure that this is the correct reading of the Y-axis, but
it's the best I can do for now.

Being charged 200% more than other libraries for the same service may
hurt, but consider what we would be paying if we wouldn't use
publishers, but instead published all our papers in a system like
[SciELO](https://bjoern.brembs.net/2013/06/cut-out-the-parasitic-middlemen/):

::: {#attachment_582 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 490px"}
[![Comparison between legacy subscription publishers and SciELO in US\$
prices per article
published.](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/scieloprice.png){.size-full
.wp-image-582 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-582" width="480" height="548"
srcset="https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/scieloprice.png 480w, https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/scieloprice-262x300.png 262w"
sizes="(max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px"}](https://bjoern.brembs.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/scieloprice.png)

Comparison between legacy subscription publishers and SciELO in US\$
prices per article published.
:::

According to a [*Nature* article citing
Outsell](https://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676),
we currently pay US\$5,000 per article to prevent public access to it,
while the overall cost of a publicly accessible article in SciELO is
only
[US\$90](https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/cjhe/article/view/479).
Try to explain that to a taxpayer on the street: you pay \$5,000 for
each article you're not allowed to read, instead of just \$90 for each
article you could read. In the light of such numbers, it is a sign of a
truly warped perspective when people can still discuss a few percentage
points more or less for what they pay to block public access to
research. Because this is what libraries do by paying subscription fees:
they pay to block public access to research.

Be that as it may, if I were to calculate any percentages from these
differences, I could say that subscriptions are in excess of 5000% more
expensive than SciELO or that SciELO would only cost institutions 1.8%
of what they are currently paying for the same service, or that we are
overpaying legacy publishers by 98.2%. So either way you see it, we
could pay less than 2% of the current cost or are currently paying more
than 5000% too much -- compared to these figures, the 200% seems like a
totally negligible number to me. In the words of *Science Magazine*: no
matter what your university paid for subscriptions, they definitely got
a horrible deal -- even if it was the best deal in the country.

Nevertheless, given the effective distraction machine that *Science
Magazine* is turning into, I expect people will discuss the irrelevant
200% much more extensively, than the crucial 1.8% or 5000%.

What we should instead discuss is the following:

Why are we paying to block public access to research, when we could save
billions by allowing access?


There is an interesting study out in the journal PNAS: “Evaluating big deal journal bundles”. The study details the disparity in negotiation skills between different US institutions when haggling with publishers about subscription pricing.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Your university is definitely paying too much for journals