Financing AAA's Publishing Program in an Era of Open Access

Bill Davis
AAA Executive Director

Maximizing free access to the published work of scholars is a principle fundamental to the generation of new knowledge. Why then would the non-profit society publishing community fail to wholeheartedly embrace the arguments of open access advocates to make electronic versions of scholarly journals free to anyone seeking such access? The answer requires an examination of the numbers. Let’s look at those for AAA.

The cost of publishing and distributing AAA’s 22 peer-reviewed print and online journals is anticipated to be over $2.1 million in 2007. Individual journal costs will range from under $6,000 to over $300,000 per title, and $55 to almost $350 per page.

Library subscribers will pay 46 percent of the $2.1 million, while AAA and its publication-sponsoring sections will bear another 44 percent. Print advertising, royalties, permission fees, individual print and digital sales, and other publications revenue will cover the last 10 percent of these costs.

Unlike commercial publishers, especially in the scientific, technology and medical (STM) fields, who have raised subscription fees to exorbitant levels, AAA has kept individual publication subscription prices extremely low. We provide free access to AnthroSource to over 2,000 institutions—tribal colleges in North America, historically black colleges and universities, and libraries in developing countries. Compared to average institutional print subscription prices in anthropology of more than $400 per title, other libraries pay an average of $65 for AAA print publications and between $350 and $1,200 for online access to current and retro content of 16 AAA titles, and back issues of another 14 AAA titles on AnthroSource.

Unlike some association publishers who subsidize other organization activities from journal publishing profits, within AAA the subsidy flows in the opposite direction. AAA and section member dues will subsidize our publishing program to the tune of more than $900,000 in 2007.

Subscription-Based Model
AAA’s publishing program financial structure is not unlike those of many scholarly society publishers in the social sciences and humanities. Library subscription revenues are critically important to maintaining the stability and viability of our publishing programs. Thus it is understandable that nonprofit society publishers fear losing library subscription revenue if their journal contents were available to all readers for free.

Among the arguments put forth by open access advocates, including those in the library community, is the assertion, based on anecdotal evidence or small surveys, that free access to content will not cause librarians to drop journal subscriptions. These assertions have now been upended by the most comprehensive survey ever conducted of library acquisitions decision-makers.

In 2006, the London-based Publishing Research Consortium, in a study of the main drivers behind selection decisions of acquisitions librarians, found that a significant number are likely to substitute freely available content for the same content available by subscription. “As [much] as 40% believe that libraries are wasting their money subscribing to journals when almost the same content is available for free,” according to the report.

The finding is easily understood given the acute financial pressure on library acquisition budgets from college and university central administrations. But it has also confirmed the worst fears of scholarly society publishers that free, open access availability of journal content will pull the rug out from under the financial structure of their publishing programs. Thus, the conundrum faced by non-profit society publishers, in a world increasingly characterized by the desire to provide free access to all content, is how can a viable financial base be constructed to support scholarly journal publishing?

Author-Pay Model
Proposals to fill the gap in financing publishing operations include shifting those costs to authors. This “author-pay” model is already underway in the STM publishing world. But such a shift raises serious concerns for anthropology, other social sciences and humanities.

For scholars in our fields, unlike their colleagues in the medical, the biological and physical sciences, there is relatively little federal or college and university grant support available, and what exists will often not support “paying” to publish research results. For many scholars in these fields, it will fall to the individual scholar to pay to publish. If AAA were to adopt an author-pay model for our publishing program, costs could range from around $1,000 to over $5,000 per article, depending on the title and the number of articles in each issue.

An equally significant concern with the author-pay model is that it would privilege scholars whose personal financial resources enable them to dig into their own pockets to pay to publish over colleagues with lesser personal means, senior scholars in more highly compensated positions over junior scholars; and scholars at large, well-funded, research-oriented institutions over those in smaller, liberal arts, teaching-oriented, less wealthy institutions.

Moreover, an author-pay model could privilege some subfields (eg, biological and medical anthropology and archaeology over cultural and linguistic anthropology); areas of study (those with immediate practical utility over theoretical work); and specific areas of anthropological inquiry that the federal government or other funders might favor over areas that are either out of favor or of no current interest to such funders.

Alternative Strategies
Another proposal to fill the gap in financing nonprofit society publishing operations is to substitute member dues for library subscription income. For AAA, all other program expenditures remaining the same, this would require an average increase in individual member dues of 71 percent, an average rise from $133 to $227. Alternatively, if dues were to remain the same, AAA would have to make up the loss of subscription income by cutting back or eliminating section support, anthropology department support, media outreach, advocacy for federal funding for anthropology, committee support and/or other benefits and services to members and the discipline.

Perhaps a combination of these strategies could provide the financial underpinnings of a viable scholarly society publishing program. Maybe there are options not yet widely discussed. For example, the proposed legislation requiring that any federally supported research be published through an open access repository could be accompanied by a requirement that every federal research grant include in its amount the costs of such publication. Another possibility would be for colleges and universities to provide supplements to faculty compensation to cover the costs associated with their faculty’s scholarly publishing work.

Clearly, we are not there yet, and absent a clear alternative to AAA’s present subscription-dependent publishing model, a headlong rush into free and unlimited access to all journal content, coupled with the loss of library subscription revenues, could well result in the demise of many of AAA’s largest, most valued and widely read journals. For all scholars, authors and readers, the challenge is to figure out how to provide as much content as possible free to those who we want to have access to it without losing our ability to continue to publish that content.