Re: cost of peer review and electronic distribution of scholarly papers

["Joseph J. Esposito" <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I am not familiar with any competent published studies of this, 
though they may exist.  All the figures Richard Poynder is 
looking for have been developed and redeveloped by commercial 
(and some not-for-profit) publishers over the years.  Doing this 
analysis is simply part of what it means to run a business.  Of 
course, this information is proprietary.

Joe Esposito

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sandy Thatcher" <sgt3@psu.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2008 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: The cost of peer review and electronic distribution of
scholarly papers

>I don't know of any such research offhand, but I would hope that 
>it would provide a true calculation of faculty time devoted to 
>this task by pro-rating faculty salaries (including benefits 
>costs) based on averages published by, say, The Chronicle of 
>Higher Education annually. I would hope that it would also fully 
>assess the costs involved in operating sophisticated editorial 
>managements systems that many publishers now use, again on some 
>kind of pro-rated basis. For copyediting, it should not be too 
>difficult to arrive at a rate per page copyedited based on the 
>average hourly rate for copyediting these days of between $25 
>and $30. This latter cost would not seem to be encompassed by 
>either categories (a) or (b), but it is an important cost of 
>value added that is too often overlooked.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
> Penn State University Press