Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

[Forwarding from Bob Campbell, who is not a subscriber to LibLicense and
so his reply did not get through]

-----Original Message-----
From: Campbell Robert [Robert.Campbell@oxon.blackwellpublishing.com] 
Sent: 09 March 2004 12:11
To: David Prosser; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide

David,

I have to admit that the figure was lower than I expected.  It is an
average of a wide range.  Some of our high status STM titles earn
considerably more per title but of course carry higher editorial costs.

Bob

-----Original Message-----
From: David Prosser [mailto:david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk] 
Sent: 09 March 2004 12:06
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Cc: Campbell Robert
Subject: RE: Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide

Anthony is quite right to reiterate that this is an uncorrected transcript
and I wish that I had been more explicit about that in my original post.
(I naively assumed that people would follow the link and see the full
'health warning'!)  However, I think that he is wrong to suggest that
there is any great ambiguity in what Bob Campbell was saying.  If you
divide the number of articles you publish into the total revenue you
receive then surely you get an average revenue per paper. The
(uncorrected) evidence reported that for Blackwell this average is 1250
pounds per paper.

Sally Morris is right that there is a difference between costs and
revenue, but this gives us an upper limit on the average costs per paper
for papers published by Blackwell.  As such, it is a much better piece of
data to use when discussing the costs of publishing that the
'hypothetical' figure that was being used by some and which started this
thread.

(I have copied this to Bob Campbell so that he can correct me if I am
misrepresenting him and what Blackwell's position is.)

Best wishes

David C Prosser