The Transcript OPEN Library Political Science Model: A Sustainable Way into Open Access for E-Books in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

1.     Overall view

The paper presents experiences and insights gained from the OPEN Library Political Science Open Access e-book publishing model; a one-year pilot project developed within the framework of the National Contact Point Open Access OA2020DE project. The topic of the paper is timely and significant as it responds to one of the major challenges in the large-scale Open Access transformation, namely the integration of books into the open and digital scholarly communication. The paper describes and critically reflects on a specific instance of a consortial co-financing model of Open Access book publishing that had been developed in a certain national (Germany, German language content) and disciplinary (political sciences) setting but without positioning this model in the broader landscape of similar, no-author-fee Open Access business models; a majority of whom have been emerging from the arts and humanities in response to the particular needs of the humanities scholars concerning publishing formats, academic evaluation, and funding availability.

2.     General remarks

The paper under review is well-structured, its topic and goals are clearly stated, and its general argumentation is sound. The following remarks aim to contribute to the improvement of its quality, to the depth of its insights and the ease of understanding of the model described.

Giving a brief explanation of the key concepts of the business model described in the article would significantly ease the comprehension of the article especially if we consider that these concepts are emerging from relatively recent trends and in some cases, there are a great deal of confusion around what exactly they cover.

In line 64, the paper introduces the term crowdfunding models without any definition or minimal explanation. In the context of the present paper that describes one specific realization of such Open Access crowdfunding models, this is a central concept that needs to be clarified and positioned in the current landscape of no-author-fee Open Access business models (i.e., diamond OA). A good overview of such business models that tackles both challenges and potentials of each can be found in Speicher et al. (2018) OPERAS Open Access Business Models White Paper (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1323708). It may be worthwhile to point out that the transcript OPEN Library Political science model amalgamates elements from the library consortia model (p.9), from the institutional endowment model (p.9) and from the freemium model (p.7). I would recommend reframing the introduction with stronger focus on the benefits and special challenges of no-BPC models and would  emphasize the fact that such alternative business models have been emerging as a response to the large-scale infeasibility of the APC/BPC-model is the social sciences and humanities (see e.g. Khoo 2019, DOI:  10.18352/lq.10280) and therefore can be considered as the only viable solutions for large-scale Open Access transition in the domain. Some striking evidence for the cost-efficiency of library consortia models vs. the APC/BPC-models can be found in (Reinsfelder and Pike (2018) DOI: 10.1080/01462679.2017.1415826).

Literature on Open Access publishing (e.g. the OPERAS white paper but see also e.g. Johnson et al (2017), DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.401029 or Solomon et al. (2016) https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/27803834) repeatedly reports scalability as a major challenge crowdfunding models face. Therefore, I see justification to add it to the shortcomings of existing Open Access business models listen in lines 57-65. The paper aims to address this problem (line 65: “Therefore, the aim of was to develop an open-access model for e-books that is manageable, sustainable, transparent, and scalable for both publishers and libraries.”), however, in my view the solutions the model in question could offer to this problem remain unclear in the text.

Another component of the model that calls for further clarification in the description of the business model in question is the role of the Springer e-book packages. In line 83-84, it is stated that “The Springer e-book packages are the most successful e-book licensing model in the German market. Libraries are familiar with the acquisition within this model. Therefore, the open-access business model for the transcript OPEN Library is based on it.” Is this model only relevant in that libraries buy front list e-book packages to be published next year or has any further relevance? Besides, I see the need for supporting the claim in the first sentence (“The Springer e-book packages are the most successful e-book licensing model in the German market.”) by references.

A major value of articles reporting experiences with innovative models of scholarly communication is that they open windows on the black box of publishing.  They do this by reflecting on the number of complex processes and practices (such as evaluation criteria, distribution of tasks between presses and a range of external service providers, investments made into metadata quality etc.) that in many cases remain invisible and therefore unexamined (or even unvalued) by communities involved in scholarly communication. My impression is that a couple of smaller additions would significantly help the article to better fulfil this need in general and to give a more comprehensive overview of the project in particular. These are:

In lines 98-112 where the consortium members and their contributions are described, linking out to the project webpage where this information is presented in a clear and concise manner (https://www.transcript-verlag.de/transcript-open-library-politikwissenschaft-community) would be especially useful. The same is true for line 147 where it is stated that in 2018, 20 e-books in the political science will be published: linking out to the titles (https://www.transcript-verlag.de/open-access/politikwissenschaft/?f=12320&p=1) and to their main features (Creative Commons license, DOI allocation on chapter-level, rich metadata – these are all listed on the project webpage but are not included in the article) would make sense to me.

Including a schematic infographic summarizing the publication workflow and encompassing details about the workflow such as how the funds are collected and administered, which service providers are responsible for each step in the publication and dissemination process, which player(s) define cost calculation and how it is done (provided that this latter would not go against the preservation of trade secrets mentioned in line 188), whether there are in-built guarantees for fair conduct and fair pricing could significantly increase the transparency of the model and would support gaining deeper insights  about its scalability and applicability in other contexts.

Alternatively (or complementary) the supplementary material could be enriched by a cost analysis with a transparent breakdown of costs (e.g., in percentages). This level of transparency is especially desirable in the dry funding climate of humanities. At the same time, it could significantly increase trust towards the model. Such trust-building mechanisms are especially important in the rapidly changing and increasingly crowded environment where new players, new actors and new concepts are vying for funders’ attention. A good example of this level of openness can be seen in the practice of Ubiquity Press (https://www.ubiquitypress.com/site/publish/).

In a sustainability context, there is a growing concern (see e.g. Gatti (2018) https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0173.0085) about exclusivity restrictions between publishers and platforms that manage and administer library funding. Such restrictions carry the danger to lock interactions between publishers and libraries and  the availability of content into one single platform. Dependency relations of this kind strikingly go against the establishment of a healthy and open culture  in scholarly communication. It is remained unaddressed how such concerns are dealt with in the in the context of the specific publishing project and what are the guarantees for fair conduct and balanced power structures (too much?) between the cooperating partners.

Finally, integrating the authors’ perspectives in some form would be beneficial.

3. Minor details

To ease comprehension and recognition of the proper noun, I would suggest displaying the publisher’s name as [transcript] instead of transcript.

In lines 113-115, it is stated that “The publication mode is open access due to the relevant scientific-political demands […] if the authors agree.” Giving more details about this in a footnote (e.g. whether there were precedents for disagreement) would be interesting.

I find redundant listing the exclusive benefits funding institutions gain once again under the 2.3.1. Internal Strengths section. Instead, it would be interesting to learn how this collaboration among libraries, publishers, authors and specialised information services facilitated mutual understanding between the different actor groups.

It remains unclear in my view, why this model works only for e-books directed at researchers and without interest to the wider audience (lines 186-187).

Besides, assuming that the open e-books are by definition coming with an open license, it is also unclear why Creative Commons licensing is mentioned as a further opportunity (line 197).

3.     Summary

The main strength of the project lies in the flexible application of the crowdfunding model in a specific national and disciplinary setting that allows multiple actor groups: authors, information services, university and state libraries, universities as well as academic publishers and third-party service providers to realize open access projects as publication partners. The direct participation of libraries and research institutions in the publication processes can strengthen their influence in the publishing ecosystem. Besides, such collaborative models of publishing have the potential to rethink publication practices in a disciplinary context and radically optimize the publishing economy. For this to happen, in-built guarantees for fair cooperation and pricing are vital should be discussed in the article. An important future question is how the participating funding institutions can further strengthen their position in the publishing ecosystem through making collective investments into the publishing infrastructure instead of merely covering the costs of e-book publication.

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

In comparison to OA journal publications the number of OA monographs being published has been considerably smaller in the last years. Therefore there is a clear need to analyze the current situation of open access (OA) monograph publishing and possible solutions for this problem. That issue has been addressed by the authors. However, it is not clear why this analysis should be limited to the humanities and social sciences, because we observe the same situation in other academic fields, as for example legal sciences or STM. Moreover, the authors have not succeeded to present the status quo of OA monograph publishing in a concise way in the introduction. References and current literature are missing to prove the evidence of a couple of statements as e.g. on page 1, line 3, line 36, or line 43. Why do researchers in the humanities and the social sciences (HSS) rarely have access to third-party funds (p. 1, line 35)? It would have been useful to show figures of OA monographs published in HSS and STM to compare quantitatively the present situation here. On page 2, line 44/45 examples of publishers in Europe are missing which are offering OA monographs for BPCs which are in the median of current OA APC or lower. Why is the publisher’s supply of open-access models in the e-book segment too low to motivate academic libraries to transform significant portions of their acquisition budgets into OA? Is there any reference to prove that statement? Shouldn't it be addressed as an intrinsic weakness of the whole concept being introduced in the paper that it has been set up as a proprietary project with a single publisher (section2.3.2)? In general it appears that the paper is focusing on an introduction of a specific concept in a report-style format, instead of a concise scientific analysis of the outlined problem. 

There are some misleading spelling mistakes, as for example on page 4, line 164 "than" instead of "then" or on page 5, line 201/203 "threat" instead of "thread". Moreover, a rigorous English language editing is recommended.   

Author Response

Please see the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf