RE: arithmetic, Re: PLoS New Fee Structure

["William Walters" <William.Walters@millersville.edu>]

Dr. Goodman is correct.

The data I compiled for "Institutional journal costs in an Open 
Access environment" show that the average page charge paid by the 
authors at nine colleges/universities in general biology, cell 
biology, organic chemistry, and applied physics from 1999 through 
2003 was $271 per article.  Counting only those journals that 
levied page charges, the average charge was $570.

(These data include page charges, extra-page charges, and the 
submission fees charged by just a few of the journals.  They do 
not include charges for color figures.  My study includes only 
those Source Journals covered by Science Citation Index.  The 
nine schools are Michigan, Brandeis, Florida International, St. 
Bonaventure, Peru State, Grinnell, West Virginia Wesleyan, 
Augustana, and Old Westbury.  See 
http://www.library.millersville.edu/public_html/walters/journal_costs.pdf
  for methodological details.)

I agree that the new PLoS fee of $2,500 is still reasonable, 
however -- especially for PLoS Biology and PLoS Medicine.

Bill

William H. Walters, PhD
Assistant Professor of Librarianship
Collection Development Librarian
Helen A. Ganser Library
Millersville University
Millersville, PA 17551-0302

________________________________

From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of David Goodman
Sent: Fri 06/16/06 8:19 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: arithmetic, Re: PLoS New Fee Structure

The posting cannot mean:

> The new prices compare favorably with the fees that authors
> often pay to publish their work in traditional journals
> (between $1000-$3000 ..).

because it is not true that $2500 is less than an average of
$1000-$3000.

Further, since most publishers, including the largest ones, ask
no publication charge at all, and a few who do charge, have the
fee less than $1000, the range should have been given as
$0-$3000. The use of "often" makes a valid quantitative
comparison impossible unless a more exact average were taken,
corrected for at least the type and length of the article, and
the subject field of the journal.

Perhaps the posting meant that non-commercial OA journals are
slightly less expensive than commercial OA or OA Choice
publishers-- $2500 is less than e.g, Springer's $3000. Regardless
of significance, that at least has the arithmetic correct.

I do not mean to imply that publishing an article OA in a PLoS
journal is not worth the $2500. I think it certainly is, and that
they do not need to use evasive language and dubious numbers to
make their case.

Dr. David Goodman
Associate Professor
Palmer School of Library and Information Science
Long Island University
and formerly
Princeton University Library

dgoodman@liu.edu