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

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I am not sure if the point has been made that page charges are very much a
US device. I am sure that there must be journals from Europe and elsewhere
that levy page charges but I have never come across one and certainly have
never published one in thirty years.

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Davis" <pmd8@cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2005 12:06 AM
Subject: RE: Calculating the Cost per Article in the Current Subscription
Model

> David Prosser brings up a good point -- that I did not factor in page
> charges and other payments to publishers that do not flow directly from
> the library.  He is also correct in that they are difficult to calculate
> and account for.  Let's see if I can come about estimating these costs
> from another direction ....
>
> In our first OA report, I broke down the estimated per article costs in
> more detail.  For Elsevier (where there are no page charges) the per
> article costs in a producer-pays model would need to be about
> $3,000/article for our institution to save money ($2,844 to be precise).
> Why is this figure much higher than the average article costs?  Simply
> because we spend about 43% of our scholarly journal funds, yet only
> publish 16% of our articles with this company.

[SNIP]

> --Phil Davis