RE: Calculating the Cost per Article in the Current Subscription Model

["Alma Swan" <a.swan@talk21.com>]

David Prosser asked: 

> I have no idea what the average amount spent per article by authors is
> and it would be tedious to find out, but until we know I'm not sure how
> useful the chart is.  If it is tens of dollars per paper it makes little
> difference, but if 100s it does.  Until we know, we don't know!

The last time we asked authors about this, the answer was that an average
of USD 300-400 per article was spent in page charges for each publication.
Caveats: we derived the figure from a very small sample of authors (8-9);
they were all in the life sciences, though in fields such as nutrition,
basic clinical research and biochemistry, rather than in fields that need
to publish graphics-intensive papers or those with lots of colour images;
they were all in Europe, the US or Australia and publishing in medium-high
prestige Western journals.

That's the authors' answer, but it's not the best way of learning what the
true state of affairs is. Perhaps some publishers or journal editors on
this list can provide actual figures for average page charges levied by
the publications they manage.

Alma Swan
Key Perspectives Ltd
Truro, UK