MANAGING

O P E N ACC E S S

AUTHOR FEES
RESOLVING THE BUILD VS. BUY DILEMMA
In its 2014 article, Digitizing the Consumer Decision Journey, McKinsey & Company warns that tools and standards
are changing faster than companies can react, and nowhere is this more true than in the field of Open Access. Open
Access publishing requires new business models from publishers, new activities and expertise from authors when
paying article processing charges (APCs), new relationships with institutions and funders, and enhanced systems
to support all parties. Its no surprise, then, that publishers are examining their author programs with a particular
focus on creating an integrated workflow between the editorial process and the payment of APCs. As a result, many
publishers are facing the choice: can they deliver whats needed with their existing systems or should they instead be
working with an outsourced partner?

The build versus buy dilemma, of which this is but one example, is a perennial topic of debate in the field of
software development perhaps why InfoWorld described it as a question of Shakespearean proportions.
Conventional wisdom suggests that building your own solution may be the right decision in areas of key competitive
advantage, or where there is no suitable commercial product to deliver your core business requirements. By contrast,
buying is often a more cost-effective way to automate and standardize core business processes, and allows the
organization to manage risk by transferring the burden of software development and maintenance onto a third party.
But which of these scenarios applies in the case of the management of author fees? The answer will depend on
the needs of each organization, but when faced with a rapidly changing environment like Open Access publishing,
McKinsey suggests many organizations need to adopt a different approach to managing the consumer decision
journey one that embraces the speed that digitization brings and focuses on capabilities in three areas: Discover,
Design and Deliver.

Here is how each of these can be applied to the challenge of managing author fees, and what the implications might
be when considering a systems solution.

3 DISCOVER
In the context of Open Access, the Discover phase means drawing upon information about
the author (including reviewer or editorial status), the manuscript and publication, the authors
institution, the authors funding sources, the authors membership status and more to develop a full
customer portrait. Publishers are under growing pressure to capture and share industry standard
metadata such as ORCIDs, ISNIs, DOIs, FundRef IDs and Ringgold IDs. They must therefore invest in
the interoperability of their existing systems that contain data about authors and their institutions,
and also find ways to allow external systems to draw on this information. (Continued)

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3 DISCOVER (Contd)
Unfortunately, for most publishers, the information in question resides in disparate legacy systems
that are not currently integrated and which rely on proprietary identifiers rather than external
data standards. Further, with the growth of OA journals and now books, the volume of author
transactions is escalating rapidly, and publishers are managing these transactions on systems that
were designed for annual subscription fees, rather than for high-volume real-time transactions. As
a result, in order to develop a robust author-centric solution, publishers typically have to dedicate
significant resources to both unifying legacy systems and building a new transaction system that
can evolve with the marketplace and be ready for numerous emerging standards. A fully unified
set of internal systems might be the ultimate goal, but it is likely to come at a high price in terms of
development costs and management time. For this reason, an outsourced solution can often make
more sense in a resource-constrained environment or where there is a need to deliver a solution
within a shorter timeframe.

3 DESIGN
The design phase is about creating a frictionless experience that uses the data gathered in the
discovery phase to ensure interactions are expressly tailored to an authors stage in his or her
publication journey. Publishers have rightly identified that maintaining high levels of customer
satisfaction among authors is critical in an Open Access model. A recent report by Forrester
Consulting for the Technology Business Management Council called The Business Technology
Scorecard highlighted that companies now live in the Age of the Customer. For publishers, this
global trend is already apparent in the move from annually billing institutions for subscriptions to
daily collection of APCs from authors.
In this new paradigm, authors cannot be kept at arms length from billing and payment processes,
which now form an integral part of the author experience. This requires publishers to dramatically
shift how their organizations operate from a business-to-business (B2B) model centered
on selling subscriptions to a business-to-consumer (B2C) model centered on managing an
exponentially greater number of micro transactions for APCs.
Furthermore, authors expectations of online payment solutions are very high. We all live in the
digital world of online service providers such as Amazon, Google and Apple, which develop
convenient, easy-to-use applications to which we have become accustomed. The pricing of an APC
is often dependent on a far larger range of variables than an iTunes download or an Amazon eBook,
but these services set the benchmark for a seamless user experience. Rightly or wrongly, manual,
slow or partially automated payment solutions that seem clunky and antiquated negatively impact
an authors perception of a publisher. Instead, authors expect intuitive user interfaces (UIs) and
robust workflows when they submit manuscripts and pay author charges. Any system used for this
purpose is likely to need some sophisticated algorithms under the hood in order to meet these
expectations.

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 3 DELIVER
Finally, the Deliver phase requires the creation of a more agile organization with the right people,
tools, and processes. McKinsey highlights the need for cross-functional teams with strong
collaborative and communication skills and a relentless commitment to iterative testing, learning,
and scaling at a pace that many companies may find challenging. For publishers, this means
developing closer links among editorial, production, finance and operations teams who may
have had relatively little contact under a subscription model. To make it easy to support these
cross-functional teams, a robust APC solution must offer simple management of complex pricing,
discounting and compliance reporting. It should also be robust enough to test and implement
promotional codes and discounts based on factors such as location of the author, institutional
affiliation, subscription status of the institution, and membership status of the author, allowing
publishers to iterate quickly in response to market demand. Flexibility is the key in this phase
of activity, and any solution needs to accommodate this or risk undermining the organizations
capacity to evolve and develop.

REACHING A DECISION
Having discussed some of the main characteristics of, and challenges to, efficient APC payment processes, we still
have to resolve the build versus buy dilemma. In some cases this will come down to an evaluation of the likely return
on investment from each of the two options, meaning the need to develop a good understanding of the potential
costs and benefits in each case. This requires careful thought, both in testing the market for outsourced solutions
and in being realistic about the costs of in-house development and ongoing maintenance, which are frequently
under-estimated. Even for the very largest publishers, its difficult to make the case to support the upfront investment
needed in development of their own systems. It is often a cost-benefit decision, and the ability to share some of the
risk with a third party can be a decisive factor.

Consistency and predictability will be crucial considerations in your decision errors and unscheduled downtime in
this area can quickly cost money, not to mention the risk of reputational damage. However, as Tom DeMarco, principal
of the Atlantic Systems Guild has noted: The more important goal is transformation creating software that
changes the world or that transforms a company or how it does business. If your chosen author fee management
solution can deliver this, you really will have resolved the build versus buy dilemma.

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