Re: Fascinating quotation

[heatherm@eln.bc.ca]

On Thu, 30 Dec 2004 22:10:24 EST liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu wrote:

> The costs which need to be recovered are the same, whether this is done
> through author charges or explicit (or implicit) subsidy.  It makes no
> difference.
> 
> Sally Morris, Chief Executive
> Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
> E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org

It makes sense that the costs of publishing would vary depending on the
specific methods employed.  This is likely easier to see and understand
for new journals starting up, than for ongoing operations for whom taking
advantages of efficiencies may mean organizational change, which is never
easy.

In the case of funding, some methods of funding are more efficient than
others.  Straight subsidy is the most cost-efficient (one payer to keep
track of, one cheque). Either production-based funding (author charges,
institutional memberships etc.) or subscription entails some
administration costs. Within any of these latter systems, specific details
will impact on the costs.  For example, large-scale institutional
memberships such as the ones that groups such as JISC have signed with
BioMedCentral involve much simpler administration than collecting payments
from individual authors (a few payers, a few cheques, as compared to a
great many payers and a great many cheques)..

Similarly, it is more efficient to manage subscriptions for very large
groups; this is one of the reasons why library consortia are so effective.  
Of all the methods of managing subscriptions, it is subscriptions for
individuals which entails the highest per-item cost.

best,

Heather Morrison