Re: Should university presses adopt an OA model for all of their scholarly books?

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

Let's hope that the OA movement follows Heather's financial 
guidelines.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Heather Morrison" <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 12:57 PM
Subject: RE: Should university presses adopt an OA model for all of their
scholarly books?

> Nawin Gupta wrote:
>
> Here is an approximation of costs for purposes of this
> discussion:
>
> Managing Editor - ranging from half-time to full-time with an
> editorial assistant - $30,000 to $100,000
>
> Editorial Office - $5,000 to $25,000
>
> Editorial Processing, from acceptance to ready for publishing in
> print and online, including copy-editing and peer review system -
> ~ $100/page; ranging from $40,000 (for a quarterly journal with
> 100 editorial pages per issue) to $200,000 for around 2,000
> editorial pages
>
> ***
>
> Questions:
>
> 1. Can you clarify that these are two ways of expressing
>    editing costs (Editorial Staff + Office), OR Editorial
>    processing costs?  Or am I misreading this?
>
> 2. $100 per page for copyediting and peer review seems very
>    steep. Is as example of a journal where these functions are
>    provided by paid editorial staff?
>
> Comment:
>
> The cost estimates for university press publishing provided by
> Gupta and Thatcher are very different.  This is quite common in
> scholarly publishing, and makes much more sense than one would
> think at first. Almost anything in scholarly publishing can be
> done either on a purely volunteer / in-kind support basis, or by
> paying for services, or something in between (e.g., an editorial
> salary only partially reflecting the work involved).  Because
> this is part of the work of the scholar, there can be a vast
> difference in cost which does not necessarily correlate with
> quality.  Some of the society journals are produced at very low
> costs compared with the commercial sector, for example, yet are
> very highly regarded for their quality, often moreso than
> commercial journals.
>
> Any opinion expressed in this e-mail is that of the author alone,
> and does not represent the opinion or policy of BC Electronic
> Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.
>
> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com