RE: Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

I cannot let this posting go unchallenged.

I shall stick to the area of STMS journals which are the biggest 
cost to libraries and where a large number of the published 
papers are actually to be sound. It is (to my mind) much more 
sensible to look at the number of articles published rather than 
the number of journals. I do not know how the Kaufman-Wills 
figure in the calculation referred to (follow the URL) given was 
reached but I would guess that they sampled the DOAJ 5000 plus. 
Many of these are small humanities journals. In STMS 
(particularly STM) the big OA publishers are BMC, PLOS and 
Hindawi. All charge authors.

Now I have been in scholarly publishing for nearly forty years 
(just finished) and I have never published a journal that had 
page charges. I worked for Academic Press (now part of Elsevier), 
Oxford University Press, Chapman and Hall and Wiley-Blackwell. In 
three of these publishers I held senior positions and had 
management of all journals in two of them. At no stage did I 
publish a journal that levied page charges. Some journals did 
levy colour charges (colour is optional) but I cut them out when 
I could. Now I am aware that page charges are quite normal in the 
US learned society journals but in international commercial 
journals they just do not figure.

I have just checked with people in two very large publishers 
among the top four in terms of size - and quality - in scholarly 
publishing. They both confirm my understanding, though they 
qualify that there could be some journals published on behalf of 
the associations which did levy page charges -- they did not 
however know them. Nor do I?

I claim that the posting by Hooker is misleading. I have seen 
similar postings. I have challenged Peter Suber on them in the 
past. I take it that this is an advocacy argument rather than one 
concerned with finding out the real situation. There is no need 
to use this type of advocacy and I do not think the excellent OA 
publishers I refer to do use it. They rely on the quality of what 
they do.


Anthony Watkinson
University College London

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Bill Hooker
Sent: 26 June 2010 01:06
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Springer Open Choice uptake affects 2011 journal pricing

Oh, that's nice.  So, shall we call subscription journals the
"Pay and Pay and Pay Again" (PAPAPA) model, now?  For hybrid
models, such a reasonable compromise so long as no one looks too
closely at the double dipping, how about the "Pay Twice For
Nothing" moniker?

<snip>

Bill Hooker