RE: PLOS article metrics

["Steven Hall" <slcshall@btinternet.com>]

Leaving aside the extraordinary and Stalinesque suggestion of 
'eliminating' the for-profit sector from scholarly publishing, 
can Heather please tell us on what basis PLoS is more efficient 
than for-profit publishers?  Its publication fees - $2,900 for 
PLoS Biology and Medicine, $2,250 for three other journals and 
$1,350 for PLoS One - are as high as and in many cases greater 
than those of for-profit publishers, but is it yet able to 
balance income and costs on an annual basis without substantial 
grant funding?

How far is it from breaking even on a cumulative basis?  This is 
not to denigrate PLoS, which has stated publicly that there is a 
substantial cost to high-quality scholarly publishing, but it is 
to question whether it can be held up as a more efficient model 
than those of commercial publishers (a claim it would probably 
not make for itself).  There may well be a debate to be had on 
the economics of journals publishing, but it needs to be based on 
fact and not, as so often is the case, on supposition or abstract 
theory.

Steven Hall

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: 23 September 2009 22:34
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: PLOS article metrics

On 22-Sep-09, at 7:39 PM, Joseph Esposito wrote:

As authors and publishers become more aware of the value in
driving up usage statistics, they will engage in more and more
SEM and often SEO.  Thus the competition for the 'best' article
becomes entangled with the efforts of aggressive marketing.
Authors and publishers who are less skilled at this will be left
behind; the more skillful will invest greater and greater
resources in SEM, driving up costs.

HM - Two comments:

1.  This is an excellent argument for eliminating the for-profit
     sector from scholarly publishing.  As things stand, some of
     the mega- publishers are already taking in profit margins of
     30% or higher; once you add in taxes, that's at least 50% of
     revenue spent without a dime going to anything having to do
     with scholarship.  That's not even taking into account sales,
     lobbying, etc.!  Add to this even more money going to
     aggressive marketing, and the percentage of the academic
     library budget that actually goes to scholarly aims will be
     very small indeed.

2.  If some publishers take this approach and it drives up costs,
     they won't stand a chance of competing on a per-article basis
     with more efficient publishers, like PLoS - or almost any
     society not-for-profit.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com