yeah this is the crux of it: this kind of money isn't in the system and so either (a) we don't do OA for books (b) we find a better way (eg collective funding models), (c) we end up digging a deeper financial crisis hole than we already have (see also: journals & the even worse mess they are in).
Understood. I do wonder if they get any feedback about the level of their BPCs, or if authors simply either agree to pay or don't. (I suspect the latter!)
I'm going to be very stupid here but I literally do not understand why there are such high costs associated with OA. Can someone explain using little words, please?
These aren't costs; they're prices. It's often difficult to establish what it actually costs a press to publish a book (for both good & bad reasons). Some presses make the effort to communicate their actual costs and link the BPC to these figures. Some charge what they think they can get away with.
And in any case, there's no reason why the costs should all be met by a BPC. There are other revenue streams out there - sales, collective library funding models, leveraging backlist etc. Some presses are working with these. Some are just charging massive BPCs.
Yeah this breakdown was really interesting. Because at £460 per each extra 6k words I make that an extra 100k words to add up to the £20k BPC they charged. That's a whole extra book's worth of words 🤷♀️
It might not be words, they also have extra charges related to images etc. Certainly things like that can be more costly for the publisher, but there are levels to those costs -- and I think these numbers represent a price rather than a cost.
yes true but the images cost wasn't mega high eitherI think, but I take your point. And I agree: a BPC is not a cost, it's a price and I think the sector accidentally conflates the two a lot and at its peril
Yes I think they say an image is the equivalent of 250 'extra' words. Ultimately though I highly doubt universities receive breakdowns itemising these costs in detail, and that doesn't seem to be the point -- you receive the massive topline number and either you agree to pay it or you don't.
Definitely a price rather than a cost, with OUP telling our authors they are authorised to reduce the fee to £8,330 plus VAT to enable UKRI to pay (for a monograph of up to 100k words) 🙄
What a surprise! I notice also on their list of costs that they 'discount' the BPC for ECRs by 40%. Any reduction of these eyewatering fees is obviously welcome, but it does suggest as you say that they aren't covering essential costs.
And ofc they also get revenue for these OA books, eg. this one I looked up at random, in addition to being OA, is for sale in print at £117.50 a copy, or £75 for the ebook, or whatever they may charge libraries for the ebook - in addition to whatever BPC was charged:
The absolute coup de grace of universities scrambling to find the money for 20K+ OUP BPCs is that the surplus ultimately gets funnelled to one of the richest universities in the world at a time when higher ed is on fire.
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https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-changing-german-voter-9780198847519?cc=gb&lang=en&