Re: Monopolies in publishing

[David Goodman <dgoodman@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>]

Anthony, as I see it Mark is at least technically correct: the bulk of the
cost of reviewing is indeed volunteer labor, undertaken for other than
direct monetary returns, although there is also considerable direct
monetary costs for the publisher.

Library expenditures, as can be seen at www.arl.org, are primarily for
staff, not materials; as can be further seen from any library staff
directory, the bulk of the staff costs are for acquiring and servicing the
relatively less expensive non-STM material. Neither system operates
automatically, without human intervention. In my experience, neither
system operates at a particularly high level of efficiency, but blaming
each other is not a justifiable strategy to avoid improving one's own
area.

14 Jul 2003, Anthony Watkinson wrote:

> As Mr. Funk thinks that commercial publishers lie when they talk about
> high costs of the editorial review process there is little point writing
> anything about the (growing) costs of paying the editor, the editorial
> backup, the office costs, the online reviewing systems etc. There are many
> publishers who wonder where all the money goes in libraries, but on the
> whole they do not post about it. However as my friend Terry Hulbert, who
> is a learned society publisher and therefore presumably not commercial in
> Mr. Funk's definition, has stopped lurking he may be able to tell him what
> sort of money the IOPP pay out.