Re: journal and publication costs, corrected figures

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

I think perhaps Joe Esposito has misunderstood the point of David
Goodman's figures.  David was not discussing pricing journals by the
article ("pay per view").  He was trying to work out whether universities
would save or lose money in the event of a complete swing to the
"author-pays" model.  (If it is *me* who is misunderstanding David's
intention no doubt he'll tell me so!)

A generalised calculation for university X would go something like this.  
At present, the library pays $Y per annum in journal subscriptions and
site licences to obtain print and/or electronic scholarly journals.  If in
future, the (electronic-only) journals are free of charge to users, then
university X saves $Y.  However, authors working in that university
publish a total of Z papers per annum in the refereed scholarly
literature, and the journals now charge authors' institutions $500 per
published article.  So the university pays $500Z per annum.  The question
then is - for various different universities, is $Y greater or smaller
than $500Z?

Of course, it is the *library* budget that saves the $Y; and what budget
head pays the $500Z will probably vary between universities.  This point
bothers some people, and there will certainly be some nasty internal
political infighting within universities.  But that does not alter the net
effect on the overall costs of the whole university.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.

----- Original Message -----
From: <espositoj@att.net>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 18, 2003 12:30 AM
Subject: Re: journal and publication costs, corrected figures

> If it were true that journals were indeed priced by the article, there
> might be something to this analysis, but journals are not priced that way,
> any more than music CDs are priced by the song.  Nor are they priced as a
> strict function of cost.  They are (mostly) priced as a function of
> several factors, including costs, risk, invested capital, and market
> opportunity.  The biggest expense is in finding customers--call this
> marketing--which is very difficult in a world that is awash in published
> research.
>
> Joe Esposito