Re: Library Support of Scholarly Publishing?

[Keith Seitter <kseitter@ametsoc.org>]

I would be happy to respond to Bernie Sloan's query on behalf of the
American Meteorological Society, which represents an example of a
moderate-sized (11,700 members) nonprofit society.  We publish our full
budget in some detail every year, and you can get the complete financial
picture of the AMS in the following reference: Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society, 1999, volume 80, issue 6 (June), pages 1269-1276.

I will summarize the information from our 1998 budget to respond to
Bernie's questions.

The total budget for the AMS was $7,211,416 (for simplicity I will round to
the nearest thousand and use the "K" suffix, such as $7,211K).

As a scientific and professional society, we administer a number services
in addition to journals for our members and the broader atmospheric and
related sciences community (meetings, member publications such as our
Bulletin, books, etc.).  Thus, our journals activity represents only a
little over half of our total budget.

We publish seven scholarly journals that had a total page count in 1998
just shy of 17,000 pages.  Here is the way the income from our journals
activity breaks down:

   Subscriptions     $2,031K
   Page charges      $1,864K
   Reprints          $   85K
   Back issue sales  $   83K
   
   Total             $4,063K

Of the subscription revenue, 85% is from institutional subscribers and 15%
is from AMS member subscriptions.  (Just under $58K of the subscription
revenue represents income from our journals online, which were introduced
in 1998, and that amount is split almost evenly between members and
institutions. Not a big percentage of the total for 1998, but one we
expect to see grow.)  To add some additional context to these numbers, I
should point out that our institutional subscriber base is not large for
any of our journals, ranging from just under 400 to just over 1000, with a
mean close to 800 institutional subscribers.  Also, our seven journals
vary significantly in size, but the average subscription price to
institutions is just under $0.15/page.

So, the direct answer to Bernie's question is that for the AMS about 42%
of the total income derived from our journals comes from institutional
subscriptions. (This is about 24% of our overall total income, but I don't
think that was really what was being sought.)

I realize this data represents a single point on a very big scatterplot,
but I hope it is helpful.

Keith Seitter



At 04:23 PM 8/10/99 EDT, you wrote:
>
>I'm looking for examples of the percentage of scholary publishers' income
>that is derived from library subscriptions. For example, X percent of
>publisher Y's income comes from subscription fees paid by libraries. The
>figures can include paper and/or electronic publishing.
>
>Does anyone have any examples, or can someone steer me to a good source?
>
>Thanks!
>
>Bernie Sloan
>Senior Library Information Systems Consultant
>University of Illinois Office for Planning and Budgeting
>338 Henry Administration Building
>506 S. Wright Street
>Urbana, IL  61801
>Phone:  (217) 333-4895
>Fax:      (217) 333-6355
>E-mail:  bernies@uillinois.edu
>
>
>

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Dr. Keith L. Seitter               phone:  617-227-2426 ext. 220
Deputy Executive Director          fax:    617-742-8718
American Meteorological Society    e-mail: kseitter@ametsoc.org
45 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02108-3693              http://www.ametsoc.org/AMS
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