Hybrid open-access journal

A hybrid open access journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access. This status typically requires the payment of a publication fee (also called an article processing charge or APC) to the publisher.

The concept was first proposed in 1998 when Thomas Walker suggested that authors could purchase extra visibility at a price. The first journal recognized as using this model was Walker's own Florida Journal of Entomology; it was later extended to the other publications of the Entomological Society of America. The idea was later refined by David Prosser in 2003 in the journal Learned Publishing.

Publishers that offer a hybrid open access option often use different names for it. The SHERPA/RoMEO site provides a list of publishers and the names of their options.

Hybrid journals are low risk for publishers to set up, because they still receive subscription income, but the high price of hybrid APCs has led to low uptake of the hybrid open access option. In 2014 the average APC for hybrid journals was calculated to be almost twice as high as APCs from full open access publishers.

Some universities, research centers, foundations, and government agencies have funds designed to pay publication fees (APCs) of fee-based open access journals. Of these, some will pay publication fees of hybrid open access journals. However, policies about such payments differ. The Open Access Directory provides a list of funds that support open access journals, and provides information about which funds will pay fees of hybrid open access journals. A substantial number of funds (40%) will not reimburse APCs in hybrid journals, including Harvard University, CERN, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Columbia University and the Norwegian Research Council.

Since one source of funds to pay for open access articles is the library subscription budget, it has been proposed that there needs to be a decrease in the subscription cost to the library in order to avoid 'double dipping' where an article is paid for twice – once through subscription fees, and again through an APC. For example, the Open Access Authors Fund of the University of Calgary Library (2009/09) requires that: "To be eligible for funding in this [hybrid open access] category, the publisher must plan to make (in the next subscription year) reductions to the institutional subscription prices based on the number of open-access articles in those journals." On November 12, 2009, Nature Publishing Group issued a news release on how open access affected its subscription prices.

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