Re: Revision to Physical Review B data

[Brian Simboli <brs4@lehigh.edu>]

Good suggestion below at the end of the email.

The scenario could be facilitated by having a sort of clearinghouse to
which universities or other institutions would contribute subscription
monies and which would then handle all the accounting in a centralized way
for a sizeable number of journals. That clearinghouse might, but need not
be, associated with or identical with a journal aggregator site run by
university consortia. Will this be realized? There is no reason to think
it will for at least the near future, given the ongoing lack of
university/institutional coordination on these issues. Brian Simboli

Brian Simboli
Science Librarian
Library & Technology Services
E.W. Fairchild Martindale
8A East Packer Avenue
Bethlehem, PA 18015-3170
(610) 758-5003
E-mail: brs4@lehigh.edu
________
 
Heather Morrison wrote:

> A couple of comments on David Stern's posting:
>
> On 19-Apr-05, at 4:01 PM, David Stern wrote:
>
> > My article in ONLINE (not Info Today, which is the platform) stated both
> > the lowest cost determined by a real publisher of $850
> BioMedCentral charges just over $500, last I heard, and Optics Express
> under $500 (for short articles).  These are both real publishers in the
> relatively expensive-to-produce STM arena; I'm not sure what the costs
> per article are in other areas such as humanities, but I'm sure there
> are very efficient operations due to the fact they simply have to make
> do with less revenue.
>
> > I was using PRB for exactly the reason you state, to demonstrate that
> > even the best model will be extremely expensive, so imagine what would
> > happen for journals with (at least) four times the profit margin.
> PRB is a high-end, highly prolific STM journal.  David is right in
> pointing out that there are publishers with much greater profit margins;
> PRB does not represent the worst-case scenario.
>
> However, PRB does not represent the best-case scenario, either.  As
> noted in an earlier posting, assuming David's numbers in Online on the
> Journal of Insect Science are correct, then a group of 500 libraries
> could support this journal as open access for $84 annually each; far
> less than making even one author payment, no matter how reasonable, and
> far less than one average subscription for a biology title.
>
> a personal view by,
>
> Heather G. Morrison