RE: Invitiation to Tender for ALPSP Open Access journals data

["T Scott Plutchak" <tscott@uab.edu>]

analysis project 
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This is, indeed, a matter of serious concern to small societies. Whether
the info is too sensitive to divulge depends, I suppose, on the society.  
I can only speak for the Medical Library Association -- for 2002,
production costs for the Journal of the Medical Library Association were
about $160,000.  Revenue was $200,000 ($96,000 in subscriptions and
$104,000 from advertising).  The surplus ($40,000) is used to fund various
member services.  Since the JMLA went open access (via PubMedCentral),
revenue has been declining and we expect that to continue.  How we will
adjust other programs and services to account for that is still under
discussion.

T. Scott Plutchak
Editor, Journal of the Medical Library Association
Director, Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences
University of Alabama at Birmingham
tscott@uab.edu

-----Original Message-----
From: Sally Morris [mailto:sec-gen@alpsp.org] 
Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2004 11:38 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Invitiation to Tender for ALPSP Open Access journals data
analysis project 

Perhaps I oversimplified.  The view of our Association is that, while OA
would undoubtedly achieve societies' mission of maximising dissemination
of their subject, it is crucial that we understand the real financial (and
other) implications to enable people to make informed and rational
decisions on whether or not it makes sense to change their model. That's
exactly why we want to carry out this study - to get some facts on the
subject, of which there seems, so far, to be a great shortage

It's clear that, for societies, reducing their income from publications
would have knock-on effects on their other activities (in fact, I'm
wondering whether societies would be willing to share information about
the percentage of their publishing surplus which goes on each of these -
what do list members think?  Is this too sensitive to divulge?)

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org
ALPSP Website  http://www.alpsp.org