Re: More on publishing costs

["Fytton Rowland" <J.F.Rowland@lboro.ac.uk>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "D Anderson" <dh-anderson@corhealth.com>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2004 8:43 PM
Subject: More on publishing costs

(snip)

"Publishing is a tedious, detail-oriented business. Even letters to the
editor must be reviewed and selected before going through several rounds
of editing and proofing. Then comes formatting and final proofing. The
quality of editorial staff can make a significant difference in the
quality of content."

(snip)

This is, of course, true of publishing in general.  I teach publishing -
not just scholarly publishing - including a course on Quality Control, and
in the general case I would agree with everything Dean Anderson says.  
However, the huge staff lists that he quotes, for certain leading STM
journals, emphasise the point that the high prices of these journals are
due, to a substantial extent, to the superstructure of commercial (even if
not-for-profit commercial) publishing that they carry.

The central argument of those who argue for alternatives costing the
academic community less overall is that scholarly publishing is different,
and that the commercial model is not serving the academic community well.
Specifically, scholarly journal publsihing is different from the rest of
publishing in being author-driven, which means that as a market it doesn't
work.  He who pays the piper (libraies, mainly) does not call the tune.  
The majority (not all) of scholarly publishing could be organised without
a commercial superstructure, if it were recognised that the low-cost
alternatives fulfil most of the required functions of scholarly
literature. By far the most important function is, of course, quality
control of content through peer review.  Most of the rest of what
commercial publishers of scholarly journals provide is "nice to have", but
not essential.

Fytton Rowland, Loughborough University, UK.