Dissemination fees, access fees, and the double payment problem

Today BioMed Central (BMC) starts charging processing fees for each article it publishes (see FOSN for 12/19/01, 12/26/01). The purpose is to cover its costs without charging readers so that access to its articles can be truly free. In a past issue (FOSN for 9/6/01) I offered some thoughts on this method of supporting free online access. Here are some further thoughts occasioned by BMC's new policy but which go well beyond BMC.

First let's distinguish access fees from dissemination fees. Access fees pay for access. Subscriptions and licenses are the primary examples but not the only ones. There are secondary examples in micropayments and other forms of pay-per-view. By definition, access fees make access unfree. So if we want free online access, then we must find a way around access fees.

Dissemination fees pay for dissemination (publication, distribution) rather than access. If they pay the full cost of dissemination, then the provider has completely covered its costs and can offer access free of charge. So dissemination fees solve the problem of free online access, if we can find the money to pay them. Hence, BMC is on the right track. The per-article processing fees is has started charging are dissemination fees.

Who will pay dissemination fees? There many potential sources and in the best future many different funding models might co-exist. Authors might pay dissemination fees, and so might their employers (universities and labs) or their funders (foundations and governments). Journal publishers might pay them out of the profits from the sale of add-ons. For me one the most hopeful possibilities is journal endowments. If a journal is endowed and can pay its dissemination expenses from the interest on its endowment, then it needn't hustle funds from any source ever again, creating a very stable, long-term solution. Since dissemination costs for online journals are low, the needed endowments are correspondingly low.

If there are many potential sources of funds to pay dissemination fees, then we shouldn't assume that authors must pay. I've argued against author fees in the past (FOSN for 9/6/01), but we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that the objections to author fees apply to every kind of dissemination fee.

BMC does not depend on authors to pay its processing fees, although it once called these fees "author charges" (http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-8219/2/2). Its latest thinking emphasizes universities. By offering to waive processing fees for authors employed by universities with institutional BMC memberships, BMC is appealing to universities to see the economy of paying small processing fees for free online journals rather than paying large subscription fees. Despite this, I'm sure BMC would be delighted if foundations made it a practice to include funds for article processing fees in every research grant.

But let's focus on the pitch to universities. It's true that universities would save significantly if they paid for journals with up-front dissemination fees (subsidizing their authors) rather than back-end access fees (subsidizing their libraries). However, this savings will only materialize in the long run, after priced-access journals have been driven out of the field by competition with free-access journals. Until then, universities will have to pay twice, first in processing (dissemination) fees and then in subscription (access) fees. The problem facing BMC is to find a way to help institutions get past the short term loss to the long term gain.

Before looking at solutions, let me restate the problem. Funding journals through dissemination fees is the only way to make journal access free for readers. So insofar as FOS is embodied in journals, dissemination fees are the long-term solution. But since traditional journals charging access fees will not disappear immediately, and since no university will want to cancel all its subscriptions to them immediately, there will be a transition period in which universities face a daunting double payment --first, for the desirable new journals representing the future, and second, for the important existing journals. So until the competition with free journals drives priced journals from the field, universities will pay for both, or want to do so, and their costs will be higher than before or after the transition period. The question, then, isn't the economic feasibility of the long-term solution, but the economic feasibility of the transition. How can we eliminate the double payments?

First note that there is only a double payment here because (during the transition period) universities will have reason to support two sets of journals when it now supports only one, not because universities would ever pay twice for the same journal. When a university pays dissemination fees through its authors, it would support journals that provide free online access. When it pays access fees through its library, it would support traditional journals that limit access to paying subscribers. The new dissemination fees must come out of a budget already strained to cover access fees.

If all universities simultaneously agreed to pay processing fees through their authors, and stop paying subscription fees through their libraries, then the funding paradigm would shift as quickly as institutional inertia allows. Of course, this won't happen and BMC isn't counting on it to happen. But because this won't happen, the BMC strategy faces a classic freeloader problem. If affluent and far-seeing universities A, B, and C, join the revolution and start paying dissemination fees, then less affluent or less far-seeing universities D, E, and F will have reason to benefit from the ABC investment without joining it.

Another way to put this is that the strategy faces a prisoner's dilemma. Universities will have a motive to defect against cooperators (freeload on early adopters and lengthen the transition period), cooperators will be vulnerable to defectors (early adopters will subsidize freeloaders and pay double payments for a longer period), and yet mutual cooperators will be best off (by shortening the transition to single payments).

Perhaps the simplest way to put the dilemma is that all institutions may prefer low dissemination fees to high access fees (partly to save money and partly to get free access), but none wants to adopt this model first. All want to wait until enough others have adopted it to make double payments unnecessary. This pattern looks familiar. There are many other situations in which everyone wants to make a certain choice but no one wants to go first. For example, all merchants in a town may want a day of rest (say, on Sundays), but the first to close on Sundays will lose customers to those who do not. Or, all the states in the U.S. may want a relief fund for the poor, but the first to raise taxes first in order to provide one will lose businesses, hence taxes, to those that do not.

(1) Legislate so that all who want the outcome, but hesitate to go first, are compelled to move at the same time. This is how towns provide a day of rest and how the U.S. federal government solved the circular hesitation of the states to adopt social security. I mention this solution only for completeness. It won't happen for dissemination fees and we wouldn't want it to happen.

(2) Parties can agree in advance that when a critical mass of them is ready to move, then all will move. People can say to one another "I will if you will" or "I will if others will" indefinitely, prolonging a circular stalemate indefinitely. But if they agree to act together when they are sufficiently numerous, then the circle is broken. This is roughly what the Public Library of Science did with its online list of signatories. Universities could start to negotiate a multilateral treaty: if their agreement to pay dissemination fees ever gets x signatories, then they will start to pay dissemination fees. If x is chosen carefully, then the coordinated action of x universities will shorten the transition to single payments. Universities would sign because signing is costless and because it hastens the day when the world will have free online access and the signatories will reduce their serials budgets.

(3) When the only penalty for early adopters is financial, as it is here, then external funding can solve the problem. If generous bystanders paid early adopters to take a day of rest, or provide a state-wide social safety net, then early adopters would no longer have a reason to hesitate. Are there generous bystanders who would like to accelerate the transition to FOS? I'm convinced of it. The more early adopters there are supported by friends of the cause, the greater is the competition for priced journals and the shorter the transition to single payments. This is a reason to think that the needed generosity is finite and temporary. The help could come from a brigade of right-thinking foundations and governments, or from a individual contributions to a non-profit FOS Transition Fund, or both.

(4) Finally, the double payments could become single payments if we could effect the transition with one set of journals rather than two, or if every new journal requesting dissemination fees meant one fewer journal requesting access fees. If the number of journals were held roughly constant, but their business models were converted one by one from access fees to dissemination fees, then universities would not only avoid double payments, but save on their single payments every time a journal converted. BMC has no direct control over traditional journals and so has had to launch new journals. But is there a strategy for converting traditional journals to dissemination fees, other than by launching new FOS journals to compete with them? We have more to hope here from the non-profit publishers, and the professional society publishers, than from the big for-profit publishers.

We don't have to pick just one of these solutions to the double payment problem. If university or library consortia are willing to coordinate their journal strategies, and support dissemination fees when they are sufficiently numerous, then they can start now. If there are generous bystanders, let them help to the extent they are able. If non-profit publishers can be persuaded to try dissemination fees rather than access fees for their journals, this will convert some journals, even if the number is limited.

And of course, within limits, universities are willing to adopt worthy new journals. To this extent, some universities may be willing to try dissemination fees even before they realize any savings from cancelled subscriptions or diminished access fees. Moreover, we shouldn't forget the range of other funders who might pay dissemination fees and spare universities the need for double payments. Insofar as foundations and governments provide funds for research publication as part of their research grants, universities are freed from their dilemma. For journals that can raise an endowment, the problem is permanently solved for readers, authors, libraries, universities, foundations, and governments. The problem of double payments is only acute if we expect the current funder of access fees (libraries and universities) to be the present and future funder of dissemination fees.

Finally, if only to show that there are many paths to FOS, remember that we can have FOS without journals. Peer review is essential for reliable scholarship, and journals traditionally provide peer review, but journals are not essential for providing peer review. There are many other conceivable ways to do so, especially in an era of interactive digital networks. If we get peer review without journals, then self-archiving can give us free online access to the peer-reviewed literature at essentially no cost beyond the network infrastructure already present at every university --plus the cost, if any, of the peer review service provider.

The double payment problem is a real one, but two conclusions give grounds for hope. First, it can be solved by any of several strategies, including coordinated action, external funding, and journal conversion. Second, it can be bypassed to the extent that dissemination fees are paid by anyone other than the libraries and universities that now pay access fees.

The economics of FOS are easy compared to the economics of the transition. But the transition doesn't have or need to have a single, optimal strategy. Let it be a patchwork of makeshifts. If different disciplines, nations, or decades have different resources and constraints, let local experimentation adapt these general strategies locally.