Print Revenue for Open Access Monographs: Key Findings and More Questions

By Laura Brown (Senior Advisor, Ithaka S+R, ITHAKA, New York, NY 10006) ithaka.org

It has been a little more than a year since we completed our study of the ways print revenue contributes to the overall sustainability of university press open access monograph publishing. John Scherer, Director of University of North Carolina Press, first proposed the project together with Erich Van Rijn, Director of University of California Press, and Brenna McLaughlin, Research and Communications Director at AUPresses. They enlisted Ithaka S+R as an independent, non-profit partner with a deep history of studying scholarly communication to help design a survey of university presses and then analyze the survey results. We were excited to undertake this project not only to better understand the landscape of open access business practices but also to generate actionable recommendations that could help to foster sustainable open access publishing models for scholarly monographs. On a practical level, the study produced several recommendations based on our analysis of the rich dataset we compiled from the survey of university presses. That dataset, which included information on 976 titles published between 2005-2022, is openly available here. In terms of findings, first and foremost, we discovered that print editions can contribute meaningful and, in some cases (30% of titles), substantial revenue to the publishing of open access monographs. We recommended that, if economically feasible, presses should consider publishing accompanying hardcover and paperback print editions as a way to generate additional income. And we pointed out that offering a priced digital edition through retail eBook platforms could give readers useful platform enhancements while generating welcome supplementary income that contributes to the overall sustainability of open access monograph publishing.

A year later, we’re curious: did the study make any difference in how presses think about their monographic publishing programs? Have any presses that have been reluctant to publish open monographs decided to at least modestly experiment with the format? Have any presses that already publish open monographs tried to benchmark their lists against the findings in the study? Have they experimented with their open access model, adding a print edition to one or more of their offerings, or including a priced digital version? Have they adjusted their revenue expectations in any way? We’d love to hear the results. This was the first such dataset analyzing the impact of print on OA monographs, but there is much we can do to build on it, especially as the landscape continues to change.

This project also was just a first step in gathering the kind of empirical evidence that will help to shape new approaches to open access. As such, it raised far more questions that it could begin to answer. We suggested some of these new areas for investigation at the conclusion of our report, and heard additional questions from publishers, aggregators, and librarians during the presentations of our findings. Ultimately, we hope this initial research serves as a catalyst to undertake further inquiry into some of the areas we identified.

For instance, while we were able to build a sizable dataset on print (and surprisingly, digital) sales of OA monographs, we were not able to measure how these per title revenues compare with those of traditional monographs. We asked for this information from participating presses, but they had trouble providing hard data. Much of their feedback was impressionistic and anecdotal at best. Without comparable evidence of average revenues from traditional monographs, it is difficult to assess the level of financial risk OA poses to at least a portion of a university press’s monograph list. It also makes it difficult to determine what subsidies are needed to make up the delta. It would be great to see a study that results in a comparable dataset of the sales of traditional monographs in the last 7-10 years.

Comparable print sales are just part of the needed evidence. Costs are another side of the equation. We touched on this question in our report, recognizing that publishers’ willingness to embrace open access models for their monographs is founded, in good part, on the need for cost recovery. It has been some time since a survey has been done on the cost of publishing a monograph and that evidence would be a welcome addition. We also need to collect evidence on how subsidies contribute to cost recovery scenarios for open access monographs. Again, we saw anecdotal evidence that the financial model for OA is usually a blend of direct institutional subventions, library revenues from subscribe to open models (whether for initially open or conditional models), foundation funding for pilot programs, and, as we learned in our study, revenues from the sales of print and digital editions. We need to understand this complicated mix better if we are to design sustainable models that will work for various types of university presses and the institutions, libraries, authors, and readers they serve. One participant in our presentations summed it up this way: “What is the magic subsidy number for OA? What mix of subsidy, print sales and library contributions should we be aiming for?”

We also need to track some of the more robust models that have emerged and assess their progress. Publishers such as MITP have navigated the OA transition thanks to generous funding from the Arcadia Foundation which has enabled them to develop their own distribution platform and build momentum for a sustainable subscribe to open model. They are now considering the idea of opening their platform to other presses. Some aggregators are experimenting with open access monograph offerings such as our colleagues who have developed JSTOR’s “Path to Open,” which is showing signs that it could be a viable model. There are other success stories from aggregators such as DeGruyter, Knowledge Unlatched, and Project Muse, and other success stories from individual presses.

As publishers and libraries determine whether, or how extensively, to participate in these open access offerings, comparative data will be essential. Ithaka S+R has already begun some of this research. We have a project underway, funded by the Mellon Foundation, to analyze the market fit of various models within the academic eBook sector to understand how these models are functioning for their consumers. The study will particularly examine the needs of academic libraries, which not only represent a primary market for publishers at universities but also serve as critical links between authors and researchers.

Beyond these financial models, we heard calls during our presentations for more channel analysis of OA print and digital sales, case studies to help us understand user interactions with OA monographs (such as this from University of Michigan Press), more robust metadata creation and distribution strategies, and ways to increase the visibility of, and access to, all available versions of a title through simple, clickable links between editions.

Perhaps most of all, we heard about the need for more comparative usage. There are projects underway to study this, such as the OA Book Usage Data Trust. Once system-wide usage evidence is made available for analysis, and as we deepen our understanding of cost and revenue models for open access monographs, we can begin to chart new pathways that realize the benefits of open scholarship while delivering sustainable publishing models. This is the question that surfaced in the presentation of our findings: “How can we build an up-to-date dashboard that pools data for university press sales and usage from distributors?”

Almost twenty years ago, Ithaka S+R published a report titled “University Publishing in a Digital Age” which took a system-wide look at how universities think about their publishing mission. We said in the introduction to that report: “As information transforms the landscape of scholarly publishing, it is critical that universities deploy the full range of their resources — faculty research and teaching activity, library collections, information technology capacity, and publishing expertise — in ways that best serve both local interests and the broader public interest. We will argue that a renewed commitment to publishing in its broadest sense can enable universities to more fully realize the potential global impact of their academic programs, enhance the reputations of their specific institutions, maintain a strong voice in determining what constitutes important scholarship and which scholars deserve recognition and, in some cases, reduce costs. There seems to us to be a pressing and urgent need to revitalize the university’s publishing role and capabilities in this digital age.”

At that time, open access policies were just beginning to shape the scholarly communications landscape. That was the case, chiefly, for journals. Monographs were hardly mentioned in the report because presses had not even begun to think about ways to openly publish their monographs. Now, after more than a decade, scholarly books have joined the open access conversation. The forces that shape their publication models, however, are very different from those of serials. That landscape is dominated by commercial firms; their market share and profitability expectations set the pace for journal publishing strategies, including OA. Monographs, on the other hand, are a market dominated by the academy. Their authors are primarily university faculty. Their publishers are primarily university presses. Their buyers are primarily university libraries (although as this study demonstrates, there is certainly a market beyond the academy for some monographs). And in some cases, their subsidies come from university grants. With such a dominant position, universities have the ability to shape the goals and market for scholarly book publishing, leveraging their influence to help deliver the kind of scholarly ecosystem they wish to foster. As we consider the future of university press open access monographs, we need to understand the perspective and values of their parent institutions, too.