Re: "subsidy"

[Velterop <velterop@gmail.com>]

In this sense, in a single journal, the best-read articles are 
'subsidising' the least-read ones. In any portfolio, there are 
elements that 'subsidise' other elements. Besides, what's wrong 
with subsidy? Pretty much all research is subsidised. And what 
are subscriptions other than micro-subsidies? (Or not so 'micro', 
as the case may be.)

It's a lot of small subsidies that a business model make.

Jan Velterop

On 20/03/2011 02:19, James J. O'Donnell wrote:

> I wrote to Joe off-line that his post made me realize that 
> "subsidy" is a highly loaded term that means "investment that I 
> don't approve of and want to see stopped".  If a restaurant 
> makes its money off the liquor, you don't say the liquor 
> subsidizes the food, because you believe in the food.  If you 
> stop believing in the food (if it's all chicken wings and 
> you're really in the bar business) then you think differently. 
> The high-revenue passengers on an airplane and the low-revenue 
> ones are just there because of a pricing model, but you don't 
> say that the first class passengers subsidize the folks in 
> steerage -- unless you're agitating for a different pricing 
> model. Think on it, but my surmise that the choice to use that 
> word is a sign that something is shaky in the underlying value 
> proposition and the speaker knows it.  (I'm part of the oldest 
> completely open access journal in the humanities, Bryn Mawr 
> Classical Review.  We pay the bills with revenues from another 
> publishing venture.  We've never used the word "subsidize" in 
> our in-house conversations about it; BMCR is an opportunity 
> that we seized because we had a way to pay for it and we're 
> glad we do it.)
>
> Jim O'Donnell
> Georgetown U.
>
> Sandy Thatcher wrote:
>
> I used to say that the "surplus" we made on publishing journals
> at Penn State Press helped subsidize the publication of
> monographs. How would you analyze that, Joe?
>
> Sandy Thatcher