RE: Paying for open access

[Ahmed Hindawi <ahmed@hindawi.com>]

Greetings:

The article http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue2_8/odlyzko/ estimates
that the typical cost of an article in mathematics and computer science
is:

1. revenue of publisher: $4,000
2. library costs other than purchase of journals and books: $8,000
3. editorial and refereeing costs: $4,000
4. authors' costs of preparing a paper: $20,000

Apart from 3 and 4, Academia pays - on the whole - about $12,000 per
article (at least in math and computer science). If referees and editors
decide they got to get paid for their service (if the publisher is
charging the author several thousand dollars, why not pay part of that to
the referees and editors for their service?), the cost goes up to $16,000
per article. These are the estimated average costs (by Odlyzko). There are
many journals with numbers much higher than these.

So, in theory, Academia should be willing to pay $12,000 per article (may
be a bit less since there would be still library journal-related costs
even if all journals are freely available online) which is the same
current cost but get open access to everyone at no additional charge.

Well, in theory is a keyword here. In practice I feel this can quite
different. Authors are not going to *easily* be willing to pay these
figures to get their research published.

Nevertheless, I agree there are advantages to "Open Access" model, one of
which is the exposure of costs to authors. Publishers with less efficient
production mechanisms will have to charge more and since authors will be
more cost conscious, those publishers will be at a disadvantage.

--Ahmed Hindawi