Re: Open Access pricing and the perceived ability of research grants to cover publication costs

["James A. Robinson" <jim.robinson@stanford.edu>]

> It would seem obvious from basic economics that a present sum of money
> could be used to provide an endowment for preservation. I am aware of at
> least one learned society which is doing just that.  The questions of how
> much need to be spent, and how to predict future costs are nonetheless
> real.

You write that one should set aside some of current income to provide for
future growth. That's normal for a business. What I'm asking is: what if
15 percent of input-paid generated revenue of 60 articles per month is not
enough to cover future growth needs?  I'd assume you have a few choices:

        You can put in more advertising in your print publications,
        assuming advertising is willing to pay for the space.

        You can set aside a larger percent of current income for future
        growth. What kind of margin are people thinking about when
        measuring current operational costs vs future operational costs?

        You get a grant or some other "free money" from another source.
        This may have strings attached, which always something to be
        wary of.

        If you are known to be good quality but are seen as expensive
        to submit to, you lower your price in the hope that more papers
        will be submitted. That doesn't seem very easy to accomplish,
        unless they are already operating with a nice cushion.

        You can cut costs in some other area of the business. Or you
        can simply not grow as your customer base would like to see
        (stop the reference linking project, quit scanning the back
        archive of content from the 1870's that you've always wanted to
        bring online).

None of these are great choices. We've seen some groups who very much like
the idea of a larger grant and others who are essentially subsidized by
their more traditional parent organizations.  I haven't seen anything
which I can read and say "Wow, now *that* is a business plan which will
handle their future needs properly."  Not that I'd necessarily know it if
it came and bit me somewhere.

> It should also be obvious that under the current model, though publishers
> could increase prices to cover such expenses, there is no assurance either
> that they would do so, or that the price would be paid. It might be safer
> to allocate the money in advance. .

I think it's safe to say that some publishers have shown that it is very
possible to increase the price to outrageous and irresponsible levels in
order to fuel their expansion and development.  My point is really that
many points of income (readers) vs. few points of income (submitted
papers) may make it hard to fuel the cost of maintaining a set of
resources which nevers gets smaller, only larger and more complex to
handle.

Jim Robinson