RE: Sub-sidy/scription for ArXiv

["Nat Gustafson-Sundell" <n-gustafson-sundell@northwestern.edu>]

Thanks for the pointer.  I left university presses largely aside 
to avoid writing extra paragraphs ... but while they have been 
shown often enough to be a superior value compared to most 
commercial publishers based on subscription price and a variety 
of denominators,, I admit I was pretty much assuming that most 
university presses might not be as efficient in operation as 
possible, so I was thinking they wouldn't serve the purposes I 
was describing.

My assumption has been that there is a new model in development 
which is almost revolutionarily slimmer than the variety of 
instances of the old model, with far fewer professionals or staff 
dedicated solely to publishing work.  These "new model 
publishers" might be showing that some extra layers of fat aren't 
always needed.  This is why I originally said the "world will 
need to change for lots of people, and not necessarily in good 
ways (for them)..." I first mentioned this in the context of 
overhead for a university press (as described by Patrick 
Alexander).

With regard to my sci fi version of arXiv, I was arguing that new 
model publishers can become even more efficient, depending on 
whether collaboration happens and whether such collaboration 
leads to further efficiency.  My experience working for both a 
new model journal and a commercial online magazine led me to see 
just how much more cleanly a new publisher can run if it starts 
(which may be key) *without* most of the baggage.  This is why I 
said this kind of change might not be good for some -- I was 
thinking that existing presses would need to question a lot of 
their assumptions (and salaries) or eventually they could be 
shown to be inefficient and unadaptable as more and more 
yardstick new model journals/ publishers prove their concept. 
Of course, there seem to be some incredibly efficient university 
presses already around that have already slim operations and 
simply take advantage of new opportunities when they come up. My 
generalizations for the sake of brevity can only go so far.  No 
doubt there will continue to be many models for some time, with 
some of my so-called new model publishers failing and some 
commercial presses with very high prices and costs continuing 
(for too long, as Stevan pointed out), with everything in 
between.

More to your comment though:  I would be very interested to see a 
good comparison of the operations (and p&ls) of university 
presses (or all kinds of presses), identifying a 'best in class' 
model or models.  Maybe the $500 per peer review from the APS is 
the best anyone can do.  Maybe it isn't.  I think there was a 
separate thread claiming a much higher peer review provision cost 
as determined by some other publisher; how could the numbers be 
so different? ... (probably mostly the formula, but also maybe 
some of the operations) ...  Are all of their other costs the 
best achievable? Should they be used as a yardstick?  I'm worried 
that new model publishers have not yet started carrying enough 
weight to prove they can carry enough weight -- I'd be curious to 
also see a study discussing such presses and what they have 
accomplished so far in the context of how existing university 
presses operate and how they have sustained operations over a 
longer term (my thinking is that some fat is needed to keep out 
the cold -- but what is the 'ideal' weight? How do we define 
obese?).  Maybe these studies exist; after all, we're talking 
about a multi-billion dollar industry -- this hasn't been 
something I've searched, but will now when I have some time, so 
thanks again for the lead.

-Nat

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: Monday, February 08, 2010 6:51 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Sub-sidy/scription for ArXiv

There should be no mystery about what the actual costs of
operating a scholarly journal are. There are hundreds of such
journals published by university presses, whose finances are
transparent to their parent universities and--for those that are
public institutions--to the general public as well.  So, anytime
universities want to come up with hard numbers to compare with
the costs claimed by commercial publishers, they have a ready
source of information at hand.  One easy point of comparison is
that most university presses do not have the costs for space that
many commercial publishers--especially those based in high-priced
real estate markets like New York City--do.  For some presses,
indeed, the cost of office space is entirely subsidized; for
others it is not.  But even for the latter, it is likely to be
less than what most commercial publishers pay, because of the
lower-cost real estate markets in which they operate.

Sandy Thatcher


>Sorry, I just returned from a conference, so I'm just thinking
>about this now.  I don't disagree with any of your points,
>although I continue to have an issue with the perceived cost of
>peer review. I'm sure that the American Physical Society made a
>good faith estimate of their costs (the link from your article to
>the slideshow didn't work, so I can only guess) and other
>publishers can probably whip up even higher costs, depending on
>the formulae they construct and the dead weight they carry, but
>continue to think is necessary or can't think of operating
>without and maybe really can't operate <as such> without.  As I
>said, I think there are all sorts of ways to make publishing, or
>any enterprise, expensive.
>
>I've seen many numbers fresh out of the opposite end of
>somebody's blackbox, back when I did financial work, and I've
>learned to believe in not a one. Aside from simplifications,
>estimates, etc. that go in, the actual operations are generally
>assumed.  My experience is that you have to knock hard on every
>single number that goes into a financial formula.  Usually, you
>can come up with a list of priorities for saving (just on
>operations), if you don't end up also finding mistakes or
>exaggerations hidden in the formulae themselves.  (Honestly,
>though, I think you need to be inside the walls of an operation
>for some time before you can see what or who, within an
>operation, is a structural support and what or who is an
>expensive decoration).
>
>Many (most, all?) library and university hosted OA journals do
>not pay editors or staff to manage peer review and thus do not
>pay money for peer review.  We can assign an imaginary dollar
>figure for the cost of this peer review, but that would be like
>coming up with an imaginary dollar figure to describe the cost of
>writing the article -- it just isn't meaningful (although we
>could talk meaningfully about the cost of the research). Scholars
>choose to serve as OA editors for journals probably for 2 main
>reasons: 1) it is helpful for their careers, 2) open scholarly
>communication matters to them; regardless of motive, however,
>they are generally providing the value at no dollar cost (how
>many OA journals pay a stipend?).
>
>You know this already.  It is beside your point.  Yes, more and
>more open access journals are appearing.  More and more libraries
>are getting into the business of hosting journals and providing
>the 'publisher' infrastructure and staff to support peer reviewed
>journals in varieties of fields (where the cost conversation has
>more meaning, but many library publishing specialists are simply
>adding this work to what they already do; or, in any case, the
>costs are much lower as shown indirectly by page cost studies for
>NFP and OA journals).  This has been much of the growth of OA
>which, while really quite impressive, you have elsewhere
>described as glacially slow.
>
>I know you already know this, but I wanted to stress it again
>because this is what I was largely thinking about when I posted
>my earlier comments -- as library and university publishing
>programs continue to grow, and there's no reason to believe they
>won't (there are several big university libraries now in the
>business), they can and should think about economies of scale,
>shared standards (efficiencies, as well as improvements in such
>areas as metadata), further sharing infrastructure, and yes, I'll
>say it again, improving the value chain.  Also, as you point out
>(and which I called overhead and profit-taking), there are lots
>of other reasons why commercial publishers are expensive -- and
>generally, these causes of expense do not apply (or apply as
>much) to OA publishers.
>
>Until we see the mandates and the effects you describe, the
>journal-by-journal growth of OA is extremely valuable.  I
>understand OA pursued in this fashion is unlikely to overtake the
>fact of big-name retail journals, except perhaps on a long time
>scale, but change does happen / has happened ( in the past three
>days, I heard interesting stories about library faculty liaisons
>in the *humanities* getting the go ahead from faculty to let
>print go -- now, if that is finally occurring ...).
>
>Coming back to your assertion that there is and will be no need
>to re-build peer review providers: I don't know.  It is just too
>easy to pluck a number from the clouds and say it is real and to
>base fees on it -- you might as well tell me peer review costs
>$1300 per article as $500 or $200.  Given the stark fact of
>commercial journal inflation over the past x years and the
>sometimes ludicrous defenses of that inflation, universities have
>no reason to continue trusting those out-sourced service
>providers, regardless of whether the numbers are really real for
>those particular publishers.  Yes, I understand, we still largely
>have no choice but to buy retail journals in my scenario, given
>the fact that peer review is not the only value being added in
>the chain by publishers (the other big one being reputation or
>career effect ... sorry, I'm retreading over the ground of my
>previous memos), but universities only benefit by building
>internal services (which can also be yardsticks for external
>service) and by seeking to make such internal operations as
>efficient as possible -- the better both to judge external
>service providers and, perhaps too slowly, to replace those
>providers as opportunities arise.
>
>Coming back to my science fiction based on arXiv:  I do think an
>innovative OA subject repository slash journal platform
>(...depending on the enhancements, as I said) could impact the
>pace and direction of OA growth. Not only would such a platform
>provide further proof of concept, but it could enhance
>collaboration in building better underlying/ shared systems, thus
>perhaps making further advances more likely at an increasing
>pace, a bit like the way factory production lines increased the
>pace with which horseless carriages replaced horsy carriages ...
>but I won't go down this path a third time, since I see your
>point that immediate mandates would get us further faster.
>
>Let me re-frame my position this way:  I think you are and have
>been proposing the way of the hare, while I continue plodding
>along with the tortoise (seeing opportunities for the tortoise to
>move along a little faster).  If either wins, we both win.
>Since I'm not convinced yet that the hare won't stop to take a
>nap, I'll continue walking with the tortoise, but I do hope to
>hear cheering up ahead.
>
>-Nat