“Hybrid gold” is the most appropriate open-access modality for journals like Medical Physics

Suggestions for topics suitable for these Point/Counterpoint debates should be addressed to Colin G. Orton, Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University, Detroit: ortonc@comcast.net. Persons participating in Point/Counterpoint discussions are selected for their knowledge and communicative skill. Their positions for or against a proposition may or may not reflect their personal opinions or the positions of their employers.

a Fellow of the AAPM and has been very active on AAPM committees, including Chair of the Journal Business Management Committee and member of the Medical Physics Editorial Board. His major research interests include computerized image analysis, especially for lung CT scans for mesothelioma and lung nodule detection, for which he has had a number of grants and patents and has published over 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Armato has been very active in teaching at the University of Chicago and has supervised the research of numerous undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students.

Opening Statement
Open-access publishing is not new to Medical Physics. For the past several years, the Journal has made select categories of published articles available online without charge to the world. 1 The rationale behind this free content is simple: articles deemed to be high impact or to provide a special service to the medical physics community, draw readers to the Journal, which encourages an expanded reader base, exposure to potential future authors of submissions to the Journal, and possibly greater subscription revenue (or AAPM membership).
Beginning last year, research articles accepted for publication in Medical Physics also could become open access through authors voluntarily exercising the option to pay an article processing (or publication) charge (APC). 2  The open-access movement has evolved a number of variations to meet the needs of different journals, different groups of authors, and increasingly, different funding agencies, author institutions, and governmental bodies. 3 The approach that is most frequently associated with the term "open access" is the "gold open access" model, in which the entire content of a journal is online and freely available to anybody immediately upon publication/posting; the concept of journal subscriptions ceases to exist when a journal is gold open access. Recently, a series of open-access mandates has been enacted by, among others, the Wellcome Trust, the Harvard University system, and the United Kingdom. 4 This trend, combined with the growing success of open-access journals, 3,5 has transformed the open-access paradigm (once considered by some to be an interesting but unsustainable experiment) into a seemingly more permanent feature of the scientific publishing landscape.
So, existing subscription journals have a choice: either hold firm to the traditional in the hopes that a continued role for this model in science persists or consider adopting an open-access approach to provide a product that meets the changing needs, desires, and expectations of both producers (the authors) and consumers (the readers).

Opening Statement
From the time journals were first published in London and Paris in the seventeenth century, 6 scientists have been able to share their work with a wider audience. Over time, a particular business model developed in which interested readers would subscribe to commercially published journals either individually or via their institutions. Since the 1980s, journal subscription charges have risen significantly faster than inflation causing a so-called serial pricing crisis for many institutional libraries. Further, barriers erected by publishers have limited access to academic research that many thought should be freely available, particularly if financed via public funds. 7 In 1994, cognitive scientist Stevan Harnad posted a Subversive Proposal to a mailing list calling on researchers to make copies of all their published papers freely available on the Internet. Subsequently the term open access was adopted at a meeting where the Budapest Open Access Initiative was initiated, 8 and the OA publishing movement was born. The OA movement has continued to grow significantly over the years with implications for scholarly research, for-profit publishers, and not-for-profit societies such as the AAPM that publish journals such as Medical Physics. 9 The introduction of the hybrid-gold OA publishing model in which journals charge authors an APC to make individual published papers freely available in subscription-based tollaccess journals was considered to be an intermediate publishing stage on the journey from the original toll-access form to that of full-gold OA. 10 It was assumed by many that, as more articles were published as hybrid-gold, the income from the associated APC would enable journals to move away from subscription-based toll-access with the cost being met by the author and not the reader/subscriber, thereby enabling members of the public and individuals in developing countries, among others, to have free access to published papers.
At the beginning of 2013, the Editorial Board of Medical Physics and the AAPM Journal Business Management Committee agreed to add the hybrid-gold OA feature to what had until then been a toll-access journal. 2 There has been much debate regarding the success of hybrid-gold OA publishing with many considering it not to have fulfilled its potential. Hybrid-gold OA journals have consistently been accused of double-dipping, i.e., charging authors an APC for hybrid-gold OA whilst also continuing to charge a subscription fee for the same journal that the author or their institution/institutional library has to pay for toll-access. 11 Further, hybrid-gold OA journals are considered low risk for publishers because they still receive subscription income regardless of what has been a low uptake of hybridgold OA by authors. 12 Rebuttal: Samuel G. Armato III, Ph.D.
The decision to begin a new gold open-access journal involves a thought process, business plan, and level of risk that are much different from those involved in the conversion of an existing subscription-based journal. For a highly regarded, financially sound journal such as Medical Physics, such a conversion, should it occur at all, must be undertaken prudently. My colleague is correct in stating that hybrid gold open access is considered an "intermediate publishing stage" in the transition from a subscription-based model to full gold open access: this statement precisely captures the motivation behind the decision to move Medical Physics in this direction.
The transition to gold open access is even more complicated for a journal that has a paper version, since gold open access only makes practical sense for an online-only journal. The conversion of Medical Physics to full gold open access first would require the elimination of the print version of the Journal, which would necessitate an overhaul of the advertising revenue stream-sponsors are not simply moving their advertising dollars from print to electronic when journals abandon paper. While the Journal is not in a position to absorb the burden of two major transitions at this time, the hybrid gold open-access approach allows the Journal to satisfy a need that has been expressed in various ways by a subset of authors and funders.
The Journal has an obligation to mitigate the impression of "double-dipping," as referenced by my colleague. Accordingly, the fraction of authors who opt to make their Medical Physics articles open access will factor into future subscription-rate decisions.
I agree that "the OA movement has continued to grow significantly over the years with implications for scholarly research, for-profit publishers, and not-for-profit societies such as the AAPM." The hybrid gold open-access model could be an important stepping stone for traditional journals that seek to become part of that movement.

Rebuttal: Clive Baldock, Ph.D.
The original intention of Tim Berners-Lee in introducing to CERN the information management system that went on to become the World Wide Web was to facilitate the sharing and updating of information among researchers at his institution.
The Web has subsequently transformed our lives and revolutionized many industries such as banking, travel, publishing, and even pornography amongst others. Considering that the Web started as an information management system, it is perhaps ironic that the open sharing of information in the form of journal publications has not been transformed; the traditional journal publishing model is still very much in place in spite of the growth of OA.
It is far from clear how the OA phenomenon will develop and what eventually will be the steady-state destination of journal publishing. Some have argued that either full green and/or gold OA is the likely ultimate outcome with no longterm future for hybrid-gold OA publishing. Further, Stevan Harnad, author of the original Subversive Proposal, has referred to hybrid-gold OA as fool's gold, the rationale being that, if there is a subscription journal that offers hybrid-gold for a price, authors would be foolish to pay for hybrid gold when they can provide green OA for free (by self-archiving) with "no need for subscription publishers, who are already abundantly well paid via their subscriptions, to be double-paid for articles that authors foolishly pay to make Gold OA". 15 Submissions to the United Kingdom Government Finch Review in 2012 into expanding access to published research findings 13 indicated that, should all journals end up as gold OA, a significant impact will likely be felt by learned and scholarly societies (such as AAPM) that rely on revenue from the publishing of journals for significant income to fund their societal activities for the benefit of their members and the wider community. 14 Should the OA evolving landscape ultimately determine that Medical Physics reaches the full gold OA destination, then perhaps, to this end, the AAPM should proactively plan for a future in which this comes to pass, where there will be a reduction in a revenue stream with new sources of income needing to be developed within the framework of a new business model for the Journal.