Established publishers are all struggling to migrate their business models from exclusively print revenues, to an appropriate balance of print and online and, in due course, to predominantly online. The links here indicate some recent approaches to achieving this transition.

 An interesting report on article processing charges across the OA landscape by Bjork and Solomon provides a good broad overview of who is charging what. The authors cluster the results of their investigation (see pp21 and 22 of report) which clarifies the observed trends in this marketplace.

 An article from Eileen Gifford Fenton and Roger Schonfeld includes some of the results of a study I completed for Portico (an entity of the Mellon Foundation) in 2005 and explains the challenges facing smaller publishers who now need to adjust their business models to fully accommodate the print to online transition.

 Library membership fees have evolved from Open Access publishers such as BioMedCentral, and these work on the principle of reducing author fees to authors whose libraries pay an annual Membership fee. The discount varies but for BMC has been ~ 15%.

 The University of California Libraries and Springer have concluded a novel, experimental agreement to support open access publishing in the Springer journals by UC authors within the framework of the (paid for) licensing agreement. The arrangement is part of the journals license negotiated by the California Digital Library on behalf of the ten campuses of the University of California. The interesting aspect is the “factoring in” of OA fees for UC faculty published in Springer journals. The announcement as per the January 2009 press release follows:-

Under the terms of the agreement, articles by UC-affiliated authors accepted for publication in a Springer journal beginning in 2009 will be published using Springer Open Choice with full and immediate open access. There will be no separate per-article charges, since costs have been factored into the overall license. Articles will be released under a license compatible with the Creative Commons license (by-nc: Attribution, Non-commercial). In addition to access via the Springer platform, final published articles will also be deposited in the California Digital Library’s eScholarship Repository.

 Tiered pricing is becoming increasingly popular as a way for publishers to balance broad institutional access with revenue that appropriately reflects this increased usage.

 “Pricing Models” - Mary's talk in Washington DC on February 11, 2004.