Google AdSense ads for open-access journalsOA journals need some source of revenue or subsidy to have a chance at viability. Those with two or more sources have a greater chance. Plural revenue streams not only bring in more money, but insulate journals against fluctuations in one of their revenue streams. If OA journals charge author-side fees (and fewer than half do), then plural revenue sources let them lower their fees and increase the number of fee-waivers they grant, and thereby increase the number of submissions and the quality of accepted articles.
SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #94
February 2, 2006
by Peter Suber
Here's a quick argument for Google AdSense ads. They may not suffice to pay the bills, but every little bit helps and this is another little bit. For journals that already have a source of revenue or subsidy, AdSense ads can provide a critical back-up.
* Journals pay nothing for them. There is a trivial cost in placing them on the page, but it only takes some standard HTML, which could easily become part of a journal's template. They take a few minutes of time, once, not an advertising staff or marketing department.
The amount of money they generate is a function of how many readers click on them, which depends on how many view them, which obviously varies hugely across journals and even across articles within the same journal. But some is better than none, and even a trickle is all gain when AdSense ads are essentially costless to use.
* The journal doesn't know in advance what ads Google will select for a given page, only that the ads will be keyword-relevant to that page. Google's algorithm decides what ads to put on a given page based on the keywords that Google's crawler detects on the page and the Google AdSense customers that have signed up to be associated with those keywords. The ads picked for a given page might change from day to day.
Journals cannot warp their objectivity in order to ingratiate advertisers if they don't know, at the time their editorial decisions are made, whom to ingratiate. Journals that really want to sell their souls to advertisers would not know how, at least not without shifting back from Google ads to traditional ads.
AdSense ads won't compromise editorial decisions or peer review, and for readers who understand how they work, they won't even present the appearance of a conflict of interest. Of course, not all readers will understand how they work and some will object that the ads threaten the journal's objectivity. But if these objections arise, they are much easier to answer than similar objections to conventional ads.
If journals won't feel beholden to advertisers, will they feel beholden to Google itself? I suppose this is a possibility. But I've seen very few scholarly journals publish articles critical of Google (though there may be more in the future). By contrast, I've seen many blogs and newspapers criticize Google, and never heard any of them complain that their AdSense accounts were jeopardized by Google bashing. Google can't afford to imperil its primary source of revenue, and its fate-tempting, puncture-inviting commitment to do no evil means that any hint of retaliation against AdSense account holders would be widely reported. Witness the ongoing press coverage of Google's acquiescence to Chinese censors. But if you like, draw the conclusion that AdSense ads minimize the advertising threat to journal integrity even if they don't cut it to zero. Certainly, AdSense ads are immeasurably less compromising than conventional ads from known companies solicited, cultivated, or negotiated by journal staffers.
While journals don't pick advertisers or ads, Google does give them the option to block ads of certain kinds, e.g. if pornographers see money in some keywords from your research niche. (It happens. I run searches for "open access" every day and find that one out of every thousand hits, give or take, is pornographic.)
* Google ads are much more likely to fit the interests of the readers of a given page than conventional ads. Because they are selected for their keyword relevance, they are narrowcast to readers of a given page, not broadcast to readers of varying interests. The better the fit between ad and reader, the less readers will complain about the presence of the ads and the more they will click-through, increasing the revenue for the journal.
Google's ad-selecting algorithm will have plenty to work with if ads are placed on general pages, like the front page and TOC pages. But it will do a better job of customizing ads for readers on article pages. The same considerations that lead readers from general to specific pages will lead Google to pick specific ads that might appeal to those readers.
In principle OA repositories could use AdSense ads as readily as journals, though repositories could probably only place ads on general pages, not on author-deposited article pages.
Of course readers might be offended by seeing too many ads on a page. All AdSense ads are unblinking texts with no images; so if there's a problem, it's more likely to be their numbers than their distracting flash. But journals can control how many ads they put on any given page. If they put on too many, the fault is theirs, not Google's, and it's aesthetic, not editorial.
* Readers can help the journals they read without making donations, simply by clicking through on some of its ads. When I see Google ads at a site I've already decided is worth my time and attention, it's easier for me to click through on a Google ad than to credit a regular ad. Instead of feeling targeted, manipulated, and "sold to", I feel that I can help a good cause (the journal) and explore a topic of possible interest (the ad) at the same time.
* In short, Google's clever move was to take ad selection out of the journal's control and turn it over to algorithms harnessed to Google's content crawler. Removing ad selection from the journal (1) frees journals from the suspicion of compromise or conflict, (2) saves the journal time and money, (3) and improves the fit between ad and content, which reduces reader alienation and increases revenue.
With conventional advertising, journals face a kind of dilemma. If the money is big enough to make a difference to the journal, then it's big enough to create a worry about its effect on the journal's editorial integrity. But the dilemma disappears when the journal doesn't know whom to please.
On the whole, the benefits for OA journals are the same as for non-OA journals. While OA journals are usually in greater need of an additional source of revenue, non-OA journals that add revenue through AdSense ads could cut prices or increase their OA experiments.
Google AdSense
https://www.google.com/adsense/
Here are three scholarly journals where I've seen Google AdSense ads. There are undoubtedly many more, both OA and non-OA.
BMJ
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/
(ads on article pages but not the front page)
Journal of Clinical Investigation
http://www.jci.org/
(ads on article pages but not the front page)
Journal of Medical Internet Research
http://www.jmir.org/
(ads on the front page as well as on article pages)
* Postscript.
(1) In September 2004 Elsevier and Google talked about a plan to give Elsevier a small payment for every user that Google directed to Elsevier. The only accounts I've seen are vague on the kinds of links that would trigger payments to Elsevier and vague on why Google would pay Elsevier, rather than Elsevier pay Google, for click-throughs to Elsevier pages. Moreover, I don't know whether it was ever implemented.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,1307667,00.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_19_fosblogarchive.html#109577012048744384
A discussion of the plan on the inetbib list (in German).
http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg25650.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_19_fosblogarchive.html#a109579786397288541
The best conjecture I've seen so far is from PaidContent.org. AdSense on your own web pages will bring in some income. But you can earn even more if you have non-OA content, let Google index it for the Google Publisher program (as Elsevier is apparently doing), and put AdSense ads on the Google-hosted copies of your pages. If this hypothesis doesn't quite hit it, I'd like to hear from anyone who knows more about it.
http://www.paidcontent.org/pc/arch/2004_09_19.shtml#010196
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_19_fosblogarchive.html#a109587894624295128
(2) Google's AdSense program is not the same as its AdWords program. One difference is that AdSense ads appear on pages you make yourself (your journal, your blog, your home page), while AdWords ads appear on the Google search returns page. In both cases, the advertiser pays for click-throughs, but with AdSense ads, this means the journal gets paid and with AdWords ads (at least ads for the journal itself) the journal pays. The business strategies for using the two kinds are not the same, but OA journals might benefit from both.
Google AdWords
https://adwords.google.com/select/
(3) I've thought of placing Google AdSense ads on my blog, newsletter, and other OA-related pages. One reason I've held back is that I often write about Google and often praise or defend it. But I'm not going to get very righteous about it since I may start using ads one day. If I do, I'll make sure they are algorithm-selected ads that don't create conflicts or the appearance of conflicts.
(4) I don't work for Google. I was lucky enough to buy seven shares of its stock at the IPO, but that's it. If you think I'm making this argument to boost the stock, fire away.
(5) Today as I go to press, Scholarly Exchange has announced its free platform for OA journals, to be financed in part through Google ads. The first $1500/year of ad revenue will repay SE's costs and the rest will be shared with the journal. Journals not wanting to host ads can prepay SE's $1500/year fee and use the platform like any other journal.
Scholarly Exchange
http://www.scholarlyexchange.org/
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2740.html
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_01_29_fosblogarchive.html#113889241017482801
Two weeks ago, I first heard about Freeload Press, which publishes OA textbooks subsidized by ads.
http://www.freeloadpress.com/
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/pendulum/Issues/2006/01_19/news/textbooks.xhtml
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_01_22_fosblogarchive.html#113837761828696590
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