The United Kingdom (UK) European Union (EU) membership referendum, also known as Brexit referendum, took place on 23 June 2016. The referendum resulted in 51.9% of voters voting in favour of leaving the European Union. UK’s historic vote to exit the EU has left people in shock and stirred anxiety across the globe, especially the researchers in UK. Britain's shock Brexit vote has left the country's universities and research institutions worried about its impact, whether on exchange programs or research funding. One of the many concerns of researchers in UK is the continuous funding of Horizon 2020 programme.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU researchand innovation programme ever, with nearly 80 billion EUR of funding available from 2014 to 2020. On 13 August, Chancellor Philip Hammond guarantees EU funding beyond date UK leaves the EU. Hence, thousands of British organisations will now receive guarantees over EU funding, and key projects supporting economic development across the UK will be given the green light. Assurances set out by the Treasury include where UK organisations bid directly to the European Commission on a competitive basis for EU funding projects while theyare still a member of the EU, for example universities participating in Horizon 2020, the Treasury will underwrite the payments of such awards, even when specific projects continue beyond the UK’s departure from the EU.  

The European Union’s new 7 year research programme, Horizon 2020, came into effect in 2014 and covers the EU’s 80 billion EUR funding. Requirements on authors were tightened,with a target for 60% of funded openly available by 2016. The policy supports Gold OA via reimbursement of APCs (Article Processing Costs); in addition, a version of all articles (including Gold) must be deposited in an open archive no later than publication, and made openly available within 6 months (or 12months for HSS).

The UK Finch Group reports were published in June 2012. Its recommendations were subsequently accepted by theUK government, marking a clear shift in policy in favour of open access for research articles, concluding that the “principle that the results of researchthat has been publicly funded should be freely accessible in the public domainis a compelling one, and fundamentally unanswerable”. The Finch report not only recommended that outputs from research funded by the taxpayer should be made open access, but that the preferred option should be to do this via the Gold model, with funding made available to cover publication charges. The Group (and the UK government) appears to have accepted the advantages of Gold over Green primarily in terms of providing a sustainable business model for OA, but alsoin terms of avoiding risk of damage to a successful UK industry. The 2012 RCUK policy also accepts the benefits of the Gold model and has proposed a method for funding APCs (block grants to universities). Following up on recommendations to make more research freely available to scientists and the public, the UK government pledged 10 million GBP toward making scientific papers open access. The funding will help 30 research-intensive universities develop open access policies and pay the author fees charged by publishers to make a paper more freely available to the public.

Even with publishers’ UK APC windfalls, the subscription prices will not be lowered. Since subscriptions are worldwide matters, and the UK only produces 6% of worldwide research. RUCK’s preference for pre-emptively double-paying publishers APCs in exchange for Gold OA is unnecessary, premature, over-priced, and a waste of scarce UK researchfunds while UK and worldwide subscriptions are still paying publication costs (PCs) in full. Research intensive universities (e.g. the UK’s Russell Group), however, remain concerned about the potential cost impacts. The momentum towards to policy preference for Gold appears now to have slowed. While it is the case that, as pointed out by HSBC in an analysis of open access policy the academic publishing sector, essentially all important research funders support Gold open access to the extent that APCs are reimbursed, very few express a preference for Gold, and many actively promoted Green over Gold. The Horizon 2020 funding in the EU started in 2014 are playing an important part inmandating the open access of academic articles.

The main drivers of open access have the interventions and policies of research funders and policy-makers, andthe growth and maturity of the open access publishing sector, and entrepreneurial activity which has increased the supply of credible open access journals to authors. Research funder policies have likely been the most important factor in creatingan environment for open access. A key obstacle to wider adoption is funding thetransition. For individual institutions, adopting a (national or local) policyin favour of Gold open access would increase their costs via APCs while theywere still paying for the continuing subscription based journals. The same is true at a national level, if a country adopts a policy favouring Gold open access significantly in advance of the rest of the world.

In a word, open access is a commercial activity. As open access has grown in scaleand matured, and has expanded to disciplines in which research funding is notas important as in the experimental sciences, it has become clear that a single simple business model will not suit all situations. While the basic APC model remains important, a substantial number of variations on this theme have emerged, as well as growing interest in non-APC models.

Full open access (“Gold” OA)

In full open access, the final published paper is made available online immediately on publication using a business model in which publication costs are paid for in a way that does not require payment for access. There are two main variants:

• Immediate full OA: the entire contents of the journal are made freely available immediately on publication.

• Hybrid (or optional) OA: here only part of the journal content is made immediately available. The journal offers authors the option to make their article OA in an otherwise subscription-access journal in return for payment of a fee.

The best-known OA publishing model isthe “author-side payment” model, where the author (or usually his/her research funder or institution) pays a publication charge. Full immediate OA journals and hybrid journals both use this approach. Many full and hybrid OA journals also offer paid-for “institutional memberships”, where by members of the paying institution can pay reduced (or sometimes no) publication charges has a moredetailed account of pricing approaches used in OA journals.

Hybrid journals

The hybrid model potentially provides arelatively low risk way for established subscription journals to experimentwith open access, in effect allowing the market (i.e. authors, or their funders) to decide what value they place on open access. Nearly all the major journal publishers, both commercial and not-for-profit, now offer hybrid schemes. Uptake by the market has, however, been small (~1–2% or so). The model continues to be regarded witha degree of suspicion by some librarians and funders, with concerns over whether the hybrid open access fees will lead to lower subscription prices (the so-called “double-dipping” issue). The publishers using this model have saidthey will take the effect of OA fees into account when setting subscription prices going forward.

Hybrid content journals

In another hybrid business model, the journal makes its research articles immediately available but requires a subscription to access other “value added” content such as commissioned review articles, journalism, etc.

Offsetting

In response to concerns about double-dipping and pressures from some large consortia purchasers, a report commissioned by Wellcome and other bodies recommended three possible approaches to making the hybrid market more transparent and competitive. These included refunding APCs at list price; tiered APCs with price caps; and funders only reimbursing part of the APC with universities making up the difference. Similar offsetting models have also emerged in the market place in which open access charges are offset against subscriptions or otherwise managed as a single procurement.

Article publication charges

Fees for full open access journals mostly fall in the range 1000–5000 dollars. Hybrid APCs tends to be more expensive andin a narrower range, typically around 3000 dollars. The situation is also complicated by a wide range of discounts, bundling and offset models. Some journals impose additional charges (e.g. based on length, or for more rapid peer review, or for different licences).

In order not to exclude authors from low-income countries or those who lack the funds, most if not all full open access journals will waive charges for such authors. An allowance for the proportion of waived or absent author fees therefore needs to be made when setting APCs or in calculating market size from listed APCs.

"Flipped" journals

Converting a journal from subscriptions to open access is known as “flipping” the business model. The factors publishers will take into account in identifying candidates for flipping include: a modest subscription revenue; expected longer term growth inauthorship than in subscriptions; higher rejection rates; attractive to authors; available (and used) funding for OA in the discipline; the volume of existing hybrid articles; and the ratio of current revenues to published articles.

Non-APC models

Not all open access journals use publication charges: about half the journals listed on the Directory of Open Access Journals do not list author fees. Instead these journals use a variety of funding models, including grants, membership subscriptions, sponsorship/advertising, commercial reprints, classified advertising, subscriptions to print editions, volunteer labour, and subsidy or support inkind (witting or unwitting) by the host organisation. Non-APC models are of particular interest in the humanities and social sciences where research funding is much lower than in the experimental sciences.

Library partnership subsidy

Library partnership subsidy (alsocalled consortia open access) is a non-APC model involving the creation of adhoc library consortia for the collective funding of open access publishing. It is a new model with relatively few examples:

• The Open Library of the Humanities is using the library partnership subsidy model to fund its new, PLOS-inspired humanities mega journal platform. Indicative annual charges are around $925 per library, assuming 200 libraries participate and 250 articles per year.

• The arXiv preprint server has tripartite funding: roughly one third from the Simons Foundation, one third (in kind) from Cornell library, and the final third from collective subsidy from (most of) the institutions making most use of the arXiv.

One of the unresolved issues with this model is the “free loader” problem: a library (and its patrons) get access whether or not they participate in the funding.

The business model of OA journals has been constantly updated along with the development of the international publishing pattern. Journal publishers in China should use the experience of western countries, and make adjustment according to the domestic situation, to promote the sutainable development of OA publishing industry in China.

Note: some parts of the content in this article are compiled from STM Report 2015.