Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in Nature Magazine

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Charles:

I must say that this is not a good accounting practice.  It 
results in the "creeping overhead" problem.  Organizations that 
do this (working only with marginal costs and without allocating 
fixed overhead), whether in the for-profit or not-for-profit 
world, find it difficult to extricate themselves from certain 
projects and also inexorably get cash flow headaches.  Nor does 
this kind of set-up address the need to accumulate capital for 
future investments.

This matter of future investments is not small.  It appears that 
many people involved with scholarly communications are advocates 
of "once and for all" information technology:  the technology we 
have today will do just fine forever.  This won't happen.  Needs 
change and grow.  A surplus or profit is essential to have money 
to invest when the time comes. With IT (operating under the 
jurisdiction of Moore's Law), that time comes every 18 months.

This is not a statement against OA projects.  Rather, the point 
is that even OA projects have to do more than cover their costs. 
If not, they will become creaky and eventually disappear.  Think 
of such things as underinvested civic infrastructure to see where 
this can go.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cwbailey@digital-scholarship.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, February 19, 2007 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article in
Nature Magazine

> Sally:
>
> People and infrastructure costs are indeed important.
>
> My assumption is that the SFU Library (and/or its parent 
> institution) is subsidizing most of these costs (people, in 
> this case, meaning technical support staff) and charging modest 
> fees to recoup some incremental costs that are not covered by 
> in-place, baseline human/technical/facility infrastructure. 
> (Heather can clarify if this is not so.)
>
> The external "publishers" paying these modest fees then only 
> have to worry about the costs of editorial and journal 
> production support (the latter may be as simple as creating 
> PDFs from Word files and putting them and metadata into OJS). 
> Editorial support may be done entirely by volunteers, whose 
> salaries are being paid as part of their real jobs by various 
> universities and other organizations worldwide.
>
> http://software.lib.sfu.ca/docs/software.prices.pdf
>
> So, from the external "publishers" point of view, the only real 
> costs are as outlined above, and, from the SFU Library point of 
> view, the costs are not viewed as if there was no 
> infrastructure already in place: to a large degree, it was 
> there already for other purposes, and it is the incremental 
> cost on top of this base that is required perform the new 
> journal-hosting function that is viewed as their "real" cost.
>
> Best Regards, Charles
>
> Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
>
> Digital Scholarship
> http://www.digital-scholarship.org/
> E-Mail: cwbailey@digital-scholarship.com
>
>
> Sally Morris (Morris Associates) wrote:
>
> > I think all of those involved in publishing recognize that the
> > major element of cost is people;  infrastructure is also an
> > important element - e.g. buildings, heat and light, computers
> > and their systems (quite complex if they are hosting
> > e-journals). If these costs were ignored, I'd be prepared to
> > guess that many publishers, both commercial and otherwise,
> > could come up with a similar figure. We have to be careful not
> > to compare apples with oranges!
> >
> > Sally Morris
> > Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
> > South House, The Street
> > Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
> > Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
> > Sent: 01 February 2007 00:24
> > To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> > Subject: Re: PR's 'pit bull' takes on open access: excerpts from article
> > in
> > Nature Magazine
> >
> > Peter Banks wrote:
> >
> > "as Heather Morrison claims, that a journal can be run on about
> > $500..."
> >
> > This is the approximate annual cost for journal hosting and
> > software support services by SFU Library, for a publisher with
> > more than 10 journals.  The price list can be downloaded from:
> > http://software.lib.sfu.ca/support.html
> >
> > Look under OJS.  The cost for more than 10 journals is $600 per
> > journal (Canadian), which is about $500 U.S.
> >
> > Please note that OJS (Open Journal Systems) itself is open
> > source, and absolutely free for anyone, anywhere to download. The
> > price for hosting and support is available for those who choose
> > this option.
> >
> > There is more to running a journal than hosting and software
> > support, of course.
> >
> > Nevertheless, I hope that sharing this information helps to
> > illustrate that it is possible to publish scholarly journals
> > without expending an enormous sum of money.
> >
> > Disclosure:  I work for SFU Library (for a different
> > organization, which derives no benefit from the success of OJS).
> >
> > Heather G. Morrison
> > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com