RE: Calculating the Cost per Article in the Current Subscription Model

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

Dear Phil,

For your ISI figure, I assumed you meant that the ISI covered that high
percetage of the science journals that either an ARL library would buy, or
that ARL faculty will publish in. As I understand your model, it's only
the cost of such publications that are relevant.  I recognize that some
applied and area programs will have more non ISI, but I'm not sure it is
much more in terms of cost, whatever it may be in terms of titles or
articles

Consider the institutions that would spend more because they produce more
articles:  those univesities are able to produce more because they have
the grant funding to support it.  This funding comes with an overhead, a
small portion of which is used to help support libraries; perhaps a
somewhat larger proportion would be obtainable to support publication.  
It might appear to administrators that such suppport is more closely
conected to the purpose of the grant, than they now consider the library
portion.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
dgoodman@liu.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Phil Davis
Sent: Tue 1/4/2005 8:20 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Calculating the Cost per Article in the Current  Subscription Model

ISI indexing coverage

I'm a bit surprised that no one to date has challenged the percentage of
scholarly articles that are indexed by ISI.  Based on an idealized model
in which ISI only indexes the most prolific journals (in rank order),
their 8,769 indexed journals index only 44% of scholarly journals, but an
amazing 92% of the articles published!  We all anecdotally know this
figure to be much too high, and I haven't received anything more accurate
from the staff at ISI.  Lowering this indexing percentage down to say 70%
has an amazing affect on the results -- much more than adjusting the cost
per article range.

Your concluding paragraph is very cogent and needs no paraphrasing except
some additional words on the implications if this economic model is
correct.  Firstly, this very conservative model predicts that most ARL
institutions would pay more in a producer-pays model than in a
subscription model.  This is consistent with anticipated results: in a
producer-pays model, those who produce more will pay more.  Researchers at
the top 100 research institutions produce the vast majority of published
research in the US and Canada, and if the full costs of publishing are
concentrated among these top producers, it is reasonable that they will
pay more.  Not all ARL institutions are predicted to pay more -- there are
a handful of smaller institutions with very large library endowments
(which is why they are part of ARL), who may pay less.

Whether or not a producer-pays Open Access model is cheaper overall, some
ARL institutions would pay considerably more in a producer-pays model and
the real challenge will to find ways to reallocate or redistribute money
to make this happen.

Sincerely,
Phil Davis