Re: Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for open access!

[Peter Banks <pbanks@bankspub.com>]

How many journals could PLoS have started with the $436,760 it 
lists on "marketing and advertising" on its 2004 IRS 990 form?

Peter Banks
Banks Publishing
Publications Consulting and Services
pbanks@bankspub.com
www.bankspub.com
www.associationpublisher.com/blog/


On 1/25/07 7:17 PM, "Heather Morrison" <heatherm@eln.bc.ca> wrote:

> There are some in the publishing community who are spending
> significant sums fighting open access - for example, Nature
> recently reported that AAP spent $300,000 - $500,000 in 2006, as
> reported in their article, PR's "pitbull" takes on open access -
> January 25, 2007.
>
> Funds that are currently being spent fighting open access are
> funds that are not really needed for publishing per se, and so it
> is reasonable to ask, what might be accomplished if funds were
> redirected from fighting open access, to implementing OA?
>
> This one expenditure by AAP is sufficient for hosting and support
> services for 785 open access journals using Open Journal Systems
> [disclosure:  I work for SFU Library, one of the partners in the
> PKP project which produces OJS].  Note:  OJS is free, open source
> software; this estimate reflects the fee for cost-recovery for
> hosting and support.
>
> If Elsevier's annual U.S. lobbying budget were redirected to OA
> publishing - this would be enough for support and hosting for
> over 3,000 journals - much more than the 2,000 Elsevier currently
> produces.  There is more to publishing than hosting and support,
> of course; but then, the U.S. is not the only country for which
> Elsevier has a lobbying budget.
>
> For details and calculations, see my blogpost, "Stop fighting the
> inevitable - and free funds for open access! at:
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/01/stop-fighting-inevitable-
> and-free.html
>
> Heather G. Morrison
> heatherm@eln.bc.ca
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
>
> Don't miss the First International PKP Scholarly Publishing Conference
> July 11 - 13, 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada
> http://ocs.sfu.ca/pkp2007/
>