RE: Costs of open access publishing - the Wellcome Trust

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

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Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 18:37:52 EDT
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> The early proponents of open access were most vociferous in 
> their view that existing publishers made things much more 
> complicated than they needed to be, and that editorial 
> processes could be radically simplified so that open access 
> publishing became viable at a publication fee of $500 per 
> article. This point has been emphasised less recently as some 
> OA publishers, most notably PLoS, have introduced higher 
> article charges with an emphasis on quality.

I'm reminded of LaRouchefoucauld's observation: "There is nothing more
horrible than the murder of a beautiful theory by a brutal gang of
facts."  The fact that OA providers are starting to talk more and more
like commercial publishers ("Sorry it's so expensive, but quality always
is") should tell us something about the actual costs of scholarly
publication in the real world, as opposed to the theoretical costs of
scholarly publication in an imaginary utopia.  

Here's what I think is the real-world situation right now:  Yes, some
journal publishers have been charging prices that are unjustifiably
high.  No, open access models cannot be provided nearly as cheaply as OA
proponents have suggested.  Therefore, here's my prediction for the
future: As OA models continue to evolve, we can expect to see the price
of OA continue to climb until it reaches equilibrium.  That point will
probably be somewhere below the cost of the average Elsevier journal.
It will not, however, be nearly as low as OA advocates think (even now).

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu