Re: Funding OA (Long-Term)

[Thomas Krichel <krichel@openlib.org>]

   Ann Okerson writes

> To one of the inquirers, a very good e-journal, we responded by
> asking whether it would be possible to charge a subscription
> fee, thus spreading out the costs among this fine title's many
> readers.  But we heard that spreading out costs among many
> readers is costly for the publisher. Instead, perhaps everyone
> could agree to pay author charges of $1500 per article?  As
> this is a journal in the information-library arena, such a
> charge represents an unfunded expense at an order of magnitude
> price higher than for other journals in our field and is
> unrealistic.

Yes. The journal could probably do with shedding expenses. 
Running an academic journal should not be that expensive. It 
should be much less expensive than, say, running an academic web 
site since the journal has fewer pages, all writing is done 
outside and the pages just cumulate and don't need updating. What 
is required is just one tech-savvy academic, she can run it in 
her service time.

When will the time come that Columbia will beg Yale to contribute 
to maintain Columbia's web site? When did we ever discuss how the 
web is funded?

Cheers,

Thomas Krichel
mailto:krichel@openlib.org
http://openlib.org/home/krichel
RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
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