Re: A word on calculating costs

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

Response to two messages from Tony McSean from Elsevier and Sally Morris,
ALPSP:

Tony McSean from ELS:

> This is much, much less true in the private sector, where expenditure
> tends to be just expenditure (with of course there is the assumption
> that it is a Bad Thing), to be switched where needed when needed.  In
> many ways it's a much simpler world, but with a more rigorous discipline
> - that everything (including wages and pensions) is paid for by sales
> income. It means that when private sector work out costs, everything has
> to be included - not just the cost of doing the work and wheeling out
> and selling the finished item, but also contingency, life-cycle
> calculations, future-proofing and above all a realistic overhead.
and

> The OA debate needs to be evidence based and to address properly the 
> issues of detail in which the devil lurks so persistently and so often
> such catastrophic effect.
Response:  Tony, I agree that evidence is a good thing.  Would Elsevier be
willing to supply a cost-per-article estimate for one, or a few, Elsevier
journals, with a breakdown of costs?  One approach that might be
particularly interesting:  most expensive journal, average cost journal,
lowest cost journal.  If the terms could be defined (contingency,
life-cycle calculations, etc.), that would be most helpful.  What is the
difference between contingency and future-proofing, for example, and why
would these not be considered part of a realistic overhead?

Sally Morris, ALPSP

> It is, of course, perfectly simple to run Phil's calculations with
> different 'author-pays' cost assumptions.  Since all the costs would
> have to be covered by the authorship (and a much smaller percentage of
> authors than of subscribers come from industry) it is fairly obvious
> that, whatever the figures, in aggregate the costs would fall more
> heavily on academia than they do now.
Response:  in my opinion, an open access approach could be a great deal
less costly than the current publishing system.  If this is correct, then
it is possible that academia could enjoy cost savings as well as better
access and more impact.  Take Phil's spreadsheet, factor in the lower cost
estimates for OA publishing as per the Wellcome Trust report as confirmed
by the even lower charges of real-world OA publishers, add in some obvious
additional sources of revenue, such as departmental funds and advertising,
and voila!  Totally open access AND lower costs for academia.

This is without even adding in the additional cost savings in terms of ILL
and tech support for authentication, both of which will be very much
needed to free up staff time for all those institutional repositories.

cheers,

Heather G. Morrison
Project Coordinator
BC Electronic Library Network
Email:  heatherm@eln.bc.ca