Mastodawn

The slides and data from my interactive session yesterday at #Munin2022 on Open Research Europe are now available on Zenodo. Take a look to see what the Munin delegates think about economics and equity in the future development of ORE: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7385351

Economics and Equity in the Development of Open Research Europe - Munin conference presentation

Open Research Europe (ORE) is the open access peer-reviewed publishing platform offered by the European Commission as an optional service to Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe beneficiaries at no cost to them. The platform enables researchers to publish open access without paying out of their research budgets and while complying with their open access obligations. These are the outputs from an interactive session run by Rob Johnson at the 17th Munin Conference on 30 November 2022 to gather delegates' feedback on the future operationalisation of Open Research Europe as a collective publishing enterprise. These outputs supplement the following paper and report: Johnson, R. (2022). Economics and equity in the development of Open Research Europe. Septentrio Conference Series, (1). https://doi.org/10.7557/5.6634 ohnson, R. (2020). Operationalising Open Research Europe as a collective publishing enterprise. European Commission Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, LU https://doi.org/10.2777/061886

Zenodo

Bianca Kramer Dec 1, 2022

Really liked the interactive format!

For the question shown here: I do wonder about the assumption that transitioning to a not-for-profit provider and moving to an open-source platform necessarily will cost more money? (compared to staying with a commercial provider on a proprietary platform)

Rob Johnson Dec 1, 2022

@MsPhelps good question, but as someone (who had obviously read my public report carefully) observed yesterday, is the current commercial provider making any money from it…?

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK How are the profit margins of the current provider relevant? An #opensource provider will give better value for money because it's inherently more efficient than proprietary software. When considering how to let more authors publish without APC or have a better experience, the proper comparison is not how much more money the current provider would need but how much money it takes in the other venues where it already happens.

Rob Johnson Dec 1, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps I think it’s more nuanced than that. A commercial provider might choose to sustain short-term losses that would be unacceptable to a non-profit (in expectation of this leading to future profits) for example. And what is the evidence that open source is inherently more efficient? The market is not always bad, and state or community solutions are not always good. It all depends on context.

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK There's plenty of evidence, the European Commission has published some too. Opensource is not the opposite of commercial, market or profit.
@MsPhelps

Rob Johnson Dec 1, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps I agree, it just depends on context and timeframes. Is it cheaper to licence a commercial product for 1 year or build your own? 3 years? 5 or 10 years? And what’s the cost of the uncertainty over when your OS solution will be ready? My report advocates for an open source solution and I think it’s the right goal in this context. But it’s not going to be cheaper in the short term, and nor do I think it’s CERTAIN to be better in the long term

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK There are definitely uncertainties, but less than with proprietary lock-in, where variable recurring costs may grow at any rate and migration costs might become prohibitive.

In the study I don't understand why "costs" were fixed at 2000 € per article. Was that meant to be "list price for APC"?

I would expect a TCO analysis to include the one-time costs of migration and development of basic features, and variable costs (non-directly) proportional to the volumes.

Rob Johnson Dec 1, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps yes, and that’s why I agree OS in better in this case, I’m just not convinced it’s better in EVERY case. Re costs, I also agree it needs a full costing and recommended this in the report, I just had to use a figure for planning purposes. Is €2,000 ‘right’? I don’t know. But I felt it was better to put some costs against my proposals than to dodge the question of costs completely (which would have been the easier option)

Bianca Kramer Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK @nemobis One thing I think would be interesting to have is an assessment of how the projected/budgeted costs (both one-time costs of setup/development and per article costs) have worked out for the current ORE.

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@MsPhelps Agreed, but wasn't it supposed to be a fixed one-off payment disbursed at various deadlines, whatever the volumes and impact? So the "costs" don't really affect the price, but yes it would be interesting to see them. (Especially in terms of FTE: did some area of work turn out to take much more/less time than expected? And wall clock time: did some development just need more/less calendar days whatever the amount of money thrown at it?)

Bianca Kramer Dec 1, 2022

@nemobis @rschrobUK If I'm not wrong, there was a split between a fixed amount of money for one-time costs and a part by volume, to be paid only for the volume realized. So there's some basis for a post-mortem, but cost/price will remain hard to untangle.

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK We previously collected some data points at https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/109051 . The most obvious comparison is OLH, which indeed you included in the study. Most of their costs are fixed. Was there an attempt to model their costs and scale them to the different scenarios for ORE?

I expect it would not be worth the effort for 500 works/year. It might be feasible for 2000. The first years will need to be covered by an upfront investment by EC. Main obstacle is getting enough submissions.

How much does it cost the publisher to publish an academic article?

I am interested to know the cost of publishing an academic article. I do not mean in the simple sense of "what does a given journal charge an author to publish?" or "what does an association or pub...

Academia Stack Exchange

Bianca Kramer Dec 1, 2022

@rschrobUK @nemobis But the comparison does not need to be just between 'license commercial product' and 'build your own open source solution' - it could also be: use (and contribute to the further development of) an existing open source solution. Eg what would be possible with Janeway? OJS in combination with OPS?

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 1, 2022

@MsPhelps Definitely! OJS might be expensive if the submission system needs to be built from scratch. For Janeway, the upfront costs would be "only" the migration from ORE data + the development of whatever features ORE needs (IIRC it wasn't much really; the tender made it impossible for OLH to participate by placing huge requirements in terms of available staff already hired).

Also, at 500 articles/year ORE could just be a small section of an existing diamong journal.

Adam Hyde Dec 2, 2022

@MsPhelps @rschrobUK @nemobis not to mention Kotahi :)

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 2, 2022

@esetera Cute! https://kotahi.community/features/

I didn't know Cloud68 was involved in this too. :)

How many FTEs do you have working on it? The ORE tender had quite a high bar...
@MsPhelps @rschrobUK

Kotahi

The Modern Scholarly Publishing Platform

Adam Hyde Dec 2, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps @rschrobUK 5 FTE soon to be increased but not sure by how many. Possibly up to 12

Adam Hyde Dec 2, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps @rschrobUK actually my mistake currently 7 FTE. Forgot some partner devs

Nemo_bis 🌈Dec 2, 2022

@esetera Interesting. Let's add some #P408 statements on the #Wikidata items of journals/venues which use it. There are currently no incoming links.
https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Q115392758

@MsPhelps @rschrobUK

Pages that link to "Q115392758" - Wikidata

Adam Hyde Dec 2, 2022

@nemobis @MsPhelps @rschrobUK sure.