RE: Payment at input and introducing competition (was: PLoS

[Jan Velterop <jan@biomedcentral.com>]

pricing..	.)
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Peter,

Many thanks for your advice (although I hadn't a clue who George F Will is
and had to look him up on Google -- I'm afraid he's not exactly
world-famous where I live -- and I'm not entirely sure what 'liberals'
means, either -- quite probably something different in the Dutch political
lexicon I grew up with, where it means something like 'moderate
right-wingers', than in yours).

But there obviously is a serious point here that we have to try and make
sure we are talking about the same thing and I'm also the first to admit
that the road to hell is paved with averages and generalisations. The
'thousands of dollars' I referred to is such an average (it's close to
$5000 per article). And I would be doing unjustice to those who go out of
their way to keep prices low. Mea culpa. Although it means, as is the case
with averages, that for those who are not pre-occupied with keeping the
price low, the amount will be even higher.

To be fair, societies and their journals are, on the whole (there are a
few 'crypto-commercial' exceptions), striving to deliver the best
information at the fairest possible cost. There are commercial publishers
striving to do exactly the same.

And as for increasing point size to boost a journal's volume, I'm sure
that is limited to just a few, but I do know of some of those. I just used
this anecdote to illustrate many publishers' policies of increasing the
volume -- fortunately, mostly by publishing more articles -- and with it
the price.

Let's be clear. Open access as I see it applies to primary research
articles only. The publisher's added value is to have it peer-reviewed,
marked up, and published. Those processes cost money. There's no
philosophical problem with recouping that money or even with making a fair
profit. I'm convinced open access can feasibly be done on a sustainable
economic basis, particularly if surplus or profit expectations are modest.
The issue is this: if the 'scientific community' pays for publication (and
it does), how is the money best spent? On behalf of the readers, via
subscriptions, limiting its dissemination, or on behalf of the authors,
via article processing charges, maximising its dissemination?

I hope that readers of these lists attempt to answer this and the other
questions that I posed.

Best,

Jan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Banks [mailto:PBanks@diabetes.org]
> Sent: 14 August 2003 13:19
> Subject: Re: Payment at input and introducing competition (was: PLoS 
> pricing.. .)
> 
> Jan, perhaps it's time that you started reading something 
> other than the tracts of the open access movement. You seem 
> to have as accurate a view of traditional publishing as 
> George F. Will does about liberals. In particular, I believe 
> you generalize from the experience of a few high-priced 
> for-profit journals, and assume that is the experience of the 
> thousands of association and society journals who struggle 
> everyday to deliver the best information at the fairest possible cost.
> 
> I only wish I could relax in the knowledge that I could 
> "recoup thousands of dollars per article from Academe." This 
> certainly isn't the experience of any association circulation 
> director I know. 
> 
> As for the idea that publishers would go so far as to 
> increase point size and kerning to boost pages and prices, 
> I'll send you copies of Diabetes from today and 10 years ago. 
> Today's theme: Reading glasses. 
> 
> You ask a lot of excellent questions--NONE of which have been 
> answered yet, except perhaps in the minds of some of the 
> rather messianic thinkers behind the open access movement. 
>
> Peter Banks
> American Diabetes Association 
> Cure. Care. Commitment. 
> Visit us at http://diabetes.org