RE: Publishing costs

["David Goodman" <David.Goodman@liu.edu>]

There has been some extension of this discussion off-list, which could
more appropriately been on the list. Jan Velterop asked (and I quote with
his permission):

Sally,

Am I correct that if I add up the median figures (450 + 75 [=3% of
turnover] + 50 [hosting] + 300 [=0.30 per copy for 1000 copies]) I come to
a cost in the region of GBP 875 (let's round it up: GBP 1000)? The figures
seem to include direct staff costs.

Am I correct in concluding that if these are the medians, reality is in a
number of cases a lower amount?

Am I correct in concluding from these figures that the median difference
between income and cost per paper published is a factor in the region of
2.5? This is the median; wouldn't it be interesting to publish the range?
"If I'm not correct, where does my reasoning go wrong?"

and I replied to him and Sally:

For most non-commercial organizations, an overhead cost in publishing of
50% would not appear to be intrinsically unreasonable. This increases the
median costs to L1350-1500. It is I think generally accepted that the
overhead costs of commercial publishers are about twice that of
non-commercial, thus giving a median of L1750- L2000.

To me, this implies that:

a. Non commercial publishers claiming costs of L2000 or higher are
operating at the expense level of commercial publishers. This may
conceivably be justified for publications where the scholarly
primary-article content is only part of the publication, such as Science
or Nature or JAMA or BMJ. But such publications usually have extensive
ads, which changes the revenue picture dramatically.

b. Costs of under L1350 are likely only in the cases where the material
needs little editing, such as Physical Review, or for bare-bones
publication.

c. If non-commercial publishers can overcome the barrier of transition
costs, their lower overheads should put them at a great advantage (just
like now).

d. The figures seem to be reaching a consensus."

David Goodman
Associate Professor, Palmer School of Library and Information Science dgoodman@liu.edu 

-----Original Message-----
From:	Sally Morris (ALPSP) [mailto:chief-exec@alpsp.org]
Sent:	Thu 3/11/2004 7:08 PM
To:	liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Publishing costs

One source of such information is the benchmarking study of 10 publishers
(2 commercial and 8 non-profit) which Alastair Dryburgh conducted in 2002
on behalf of ALPSP.  Although the full report is not freely available
(like all publishers, we had to recoup the costs somehow!), there's a
summary at <http://www.alpsp.org/publications/pub6.htm>.  I can tell you
that the 'first copy costs' per article ranged from approx GBP 200 to 1200
(median £450) - refereeing (applicable, of course, to rejected as well as
accepted papers) £30-145 (median £75).  This figure included peer review
management, rewriting, copy editing, typesetting. It did not include
promotion to authors (median £25/paper), sales and marketing to customers
(median 3% of revenue), distribution costs (median £0.30 per copy), or
electronic hosting costs (£2-59 per paper, £2000-180,000 per title).  
Median income was £2400 per paper published.

Alastair may be able to elucidate further.

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org