Re: Ocean Science from EGU

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Dear David

That is most helpful. I was looking in the wrong place i.e. in a section 
called General Terms for EGU Submissions. I did not drill down 
sufficiently.

I agree that most new journals do not make money for many years but it 
would worry me as a publisher if there were only 11 papers published at 
this stage in the first year of the journal. Perhaps the editors are not 
receiving any honorarium? Perhaps the costs of the various electronic 
systems are not being applied? It would be great to know more.

I also note that Copernicus, the publisher (is that a publishing arm of 
the EGU?) publish a string of OA journals only a few years old - see 
http://www.copernicus.org/COPERNICUS/publications/publication_journals.html. 
They seem to be composed of special issues or perhaps even conference 
proceedings. I wonder if the economics of these are better.

I do not think it is a good idea to minimise the importance of a 
sustainable model. Maybe quite a number of smaller societies expect to 
make a loss on their publications. BioOne came into existence because 
societies had not build in a surplus that enabled them to invest in going 
online.

The larger and (generally) the more important societies (who do make a 
surplus) are often genuinely interested in the OA model as I think DC 
Principles and various ALPSP statements have proved, but cannot afford to 
make a loss by giving up the subscription model without some evidence of 
success with another model. OK - the JISC study written by Mary Waltham 
takes it as axiomatic than the subscription model is not sustainable, but 
this is not how publishers generally see the picture and not all 
librarians do either. As I understand it the burden of the recent Royal 
Society statement (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3882) is that 
adopting policies that undermine the subscription model is ill-advised 
until the alternative model has proved itself. This seems to me prudent.

I happen to believe that the author-pays model is inferior to the 
reader-pays model in the context of scholarly communication, for reasons 
that I have set out in this list, but the official policy of publishing 
bodies is to be business neutral and this is the position held by most 
publishers I know and you know.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 11:51 PM
Subject: RE: Ocean Science from EGU

> Details of the author charges for Ocean Science are here:
>
> http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/os/guidelines_for_manuscript_and_article.html#chapter7
>
> On the peer review system, you may be interested in an article written 
> by Ulrich Poschl describing the system for Atmospheric Chemistry and 
> Physics, another journal from the EGU that uses the same system:
>
> "Interactive journal concept for improved scientific publishing 
> <http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/poeschl_learned_publishing_2004.pdf> 
> and quality assurance" Ulrich Poschl, Learned Publishing, 17, 105-113, 
> April 2004 (invited article)
>
> I'm afraid you do overestimate my reach as I am not privy to the 
> finances of the EGU.  However, I can make two general points.  The first 
> is that as this is a new journal in its first year I would be amazed if 
> it was not being subsidised by the EGU.  New subscription journals take 
> on average seven years to reach the point where they break-even.  It 
> would be wrong I think to expect any new title, even an open access one, 
> to be in the black in the first year.
>
> The second is that, as you say, any society is perfectly entitled to 
> subsidise their titles if they wish.  You will recall that the recent 
> ALPSP/Blackwell survey 'What do societies do with their publishing 
> surpluses' (http://www.alpsp.org/news/NFPsurvey-summaryofresults.pdf) 
> found that for a third of respondents there was no surplus - i.e., the 
> journals were being subsidised by the societies.  I'm not sure what 
> conclusions you would reach from that about the sustainability of the 
> subscription model!
>
> Best wishes
>
> David C Prosser PhD
> Director
> SPARC Europe
> E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
> http://www.sparceurope.org