Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide

[Peter Suber <peters@earlham.edu>]

[Forwarding from Melissa Hagemann.]

As many of you are aware, the Open Society Institute has sponsored
business planning guides for open access publishers. Publishers of
existing and prospective open access journals have found these guides
useful in exploring potential open access business models.

Unfortunately, the Guide has been misquoted to the effect that the authors
estimate the cost of a published journal article at $3,750. Such a claim
is incorrect. As the Guide text makes abundantly clear, the table
containing this number serves only to illustrate a simple method by which
such fees may be determined, and all the figures used in the illustration
are identified as hypothetical.

Citing such a heuristic example will only be perceived as uncritical. As
all the numbers in the Guide's illustration are contrived and clearly
identified to be so we obviously adduced no evidence to substantiate them.  
None of the numbers in the illustration are represented to be industry
averages, nor can they reasonably be mistaken as such.

We ask that all those who have been misquoting the OSI Guide desist from
doing so in the future.

Sincerely,

Melissa Hagemann
Program Manager
Open Access Project
Open Society Institute