Do the Bergstrom and McAfee Indexes reflect Value?

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Jan Veltrop brings up a very fundamental question to the analysis of the 
Bergstrom and McAfee data, that is, are there more appropriate 
measurements for the abstract concept of "value"?  I will argue that the 
choice of B&M's indexes are reliable and robust. While modifications may 
make them more accurate for particular comparisons, these indexes are 
simple, easy to construct, and provide immense heuristic value.

Cost Per Article

The CPA is a measurement of the production value that publishers provide 
consumers.  While Jan argues (correctly) that page length and article type 
play a factor in how much it costs to produce an article, the number of 
articles published each year is a good indicator of how much unique 
content you are purchasing each year without having to undergo indepth 
article-by-article analysis.

Cost Per Citation

Citations are an accepted indicator of popularity and prestige.  While 
they do not necessarily reflect articles that are read but not cited, they 
are transparent figures that are difficult to abuse (without being caught) 
-- which is not the case with download statistics.  In addition, download 
statistics appear to be heavily influenced by a publisher's interface, 
which is not the case with citations (see 
http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/interface.pdf )

Relative Cost Index

The Bergstrom and McAfee data go beyond most price studies and compare 
journals to other journals within their field.  This can provide a more 
balanced comparison than, say, the OUP/Loughborough University study that 
categorized journals only down to its major discipline (science, social 
science, humanities, etc. see 
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/dis/lisu/pages/publications/oup.html )

In sum, these three indexes are good indicators of "value".  If anyone can 
come up with better indexes, please speak up, otherwise we can agree that 
they are the best that we have to work with.

-Phil Davis

At 05:39 PM 12/5/2005, you wrote:
> Some shortcomings of the otherwise interesting data and graphs are that
> the data do not (not easily anyway) separate different journal types, such
> as review journals, research-journals, magazines with scientific content
> (such as e.g. Nature and Science), and mixtures of the above, and the
> graphs do not seem to take into account the very different portfolios of
> the various publishers in terms of disciplines covered. 'Value' is a
> relative concept. Average article length, for instance, and things like
> citation behaviour and habits with regard to downloads/usage from the
> publisher's site (take Physics as an example), or even download/usage
> habits per se (the value of publishing an article is not just in its
> usage, and sometimes almost not at all in its usage) vary considerably in
> different disciplines with its consequences on price per article and on
> just about every other variable in the dataset. For example, a portfolio
> consisting mainly of medical review journals and one consisting of mainly
> mathematics research journals will have extremely different
> characteristics, which are reflected in prices, citations, usage, et
> cetera, rendering direct comparisons between the two pretty useless.
>
> My suggestion would be to make tables and graphs per discipline and taking
> into account journal types in order to have more material for meaningful
> comparisons.
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> On 5 Dec 2005, at 00:51, Phil Davis wrote:
>
> > The argument that Morna Conway is providing is clearly an
> > obfuscation of the point of the Bergstrom and McAfee data.  They
> > were not attempting to justify the prices of journals, only to
> > report and analyze them based on what they felt were appropriate
> > value measures.  I could start the most expensive journal in
> > library science (I would have to beat out Emerald first), and
> > justify my price that I only had ten subscribers, that I needed to
> > take 25% profit to run my business, that I had no advertisement,
> > that I had to travel around the world to attract authors, and that
> > I had to pay reviewers a lot of money to read the poorly-written
> > manuscripts. This is a justification of the price, which in no way
> > is related to its value (in terms of dollars) to the subscriber
> > community.  It is the latter that Bergstrom and McAfee are getting
> > at, not the further.
> >
> > --Phil Davis
> >
> > Journal Cost Effectiveness: http://www.journalprices.com/
> > Graphs and Tables: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/prices.pdf