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Re: Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for open access!

Sally:

It may be that the low-end figures you mention are for OA e-journals that have some or all of these characteristics:

1. They are being published using existing infrastructure at universities and other organizations. The add-on cost is marginal.

2. They have a relatively low volume of articles published per year. The editorial and production effort required is low.

3. They are solely or primarily textual. There is no need to be concerned with issues like high-resolution color photographs, complex tabular data, charts and graphs, or extensive illustrations.

4. They are using Open Journal Systems or similar open source journal management software. This significantly reduces the complexity and labor needed to support e-journal production.

5. There are no marketing costs because the journals are free. Limited promotion is done via mailing lists and other free means.

6. There are no costs associated with imposing access controls or subscription maintenance.

7. There are no paid staff because, given the above, the work can easily be done with volunteer staff and these staff can be anywhere in the world.

Obviously, this model works well for some types of scholarly journals, but not others.

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
E-Mail: cwbailey@digital-scholarship.com
Publications: http://www.digital-scholarship.org/

****

Sally Morris (Morris Associates) wrote:

I think the problem with many of the implausibly low-end estimates of the costs of journal publishing is that they disregard the real costs - people, and their associated overheads (salary-related costs, office space, heat and light, equipment, etc). However, these costs can be significantly reduced by offshoring the real value publishers add - peer-review management, editing and marketing - to low-cost countries; in fact, it astonishes me that so few have so far done so. They may not find a ready-trained work force, but they can train bright people to do this work. Have a look, for example, at the OA charges of Hindawi Publishing, which is based in Egypt.

Sally Morris
Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
South House, The Street
Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
Email: sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk

-----Original Message-----
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: 26 January 2007 22:41
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: Stop fighting the inevitable - and free funds for open access!

As a publisher (of journals as well as books) and as co-director
of the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing at Penn State,
where we are developing with the support of a Mellon grant
jointly with Cornell an open-source journal publishing platform
known as DPubs, I find this a peculiar calculation of the cost of
operating a journal. Surely, Heather Morrison knows better than
to suggest that it only costs $509 to run a journal even using a
"free" open-source system like OJS. Then what is the purpose of
making such a claim, other than providing more propaganda for OA,
denigrating further the Elseviers of the world, and trying to
fool some people who may not know better? If we are going to
engage in rational discussion of the pros and cons of OA, we need
to get beyond simplistic analyses like this.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State Press