RE: PLOS article metrics

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

The handy table from BMC shows just how varied publication fees 
are:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/authors/apccomparison/

Some for profit publishers charge very low fees (e.g. Hindawi) 
and some society publishes charge much higher fees (e.g., ACS). 
Although I think I would be hard- pressed to support the 
contention that the PLoS fees are high compared to many 
commercial publishers - even the highest PLoS fee is less than 
Elsevier, Springer, Taylor and Francis, Wiley and Sage (and note 
that PLoS does not have additional colour figure charges).

PLoS covers about 80% of annual operating costs through operating 
revenue (mainly publishing fees) and expects that to rise to 100% 
next year - http://www.plos.org/downloads/progress_report.pdf p8. 
A number of open access publishers are already profitable, 
including Hindawi, MedKnow, and, I believe, BMC (although it is 
less clear now that it is part of Springer).

I would note in passing that traditionally it is claimed that it 
takes 7 years for a subscription journal to reach profitability. 
Even the oldest PLoS journal is only 6 years old (next month) so 
any surprise we feel at its current financial position should be 
that it is doing so well!

David Prosser
Director, SPARC Europe

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Hall
Sent: 25 September 2009 01:04
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: PLOS article metrics

Leaving aside the extraordinary and Stalinesque suggestion of
'eliminating' the for-profit sector from scholarly publishing,
can Heather please tell us on what basis PLoS is more efficient
than for-profit publishers?  Its publication fees - $2,900 for
PLoS Biology and Medicine, $2,250 for three other journals and
$1,350 for PLoS One - are as high as and in many cases greater
than those of for-profit publishers, but is it yet able to
balance income and costs on an annual basis without substantial
grant funding?

How far is it from breaking even on a cumulative basis?  This is
not to denigrate PLoS, which has stated publicly that there is a
substantial cost to high-quality scholarly publishing, but it is
to question whether it can be held up as a more efficient model
than those of commercial publishers (a claim it would probably
not make for itself).  There may well be a debate to be had on
the economics of journals publishing, but it needs to be based on
fact and not, as so often is the case, on supposition or abstract
theory.

Steven Hall

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: 23 September 2009 22:34
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: PLOS article metrics

On 22-Sep-09, at 7:39 PM, Joseph Esposito wrote:

As authors and publishers become more aware of the value in
driving up usage statistics, they will engage in more and more
SEM and often SEO.  Thus the competition for the 'best' article
becomes entangled with the efforts of aggressive marketing.
Authors and publishers who are less skilled at this will be left
behind; the more skillful will invest greater and greater
resources in SEM, driving up costs.

HM - Two comments:

1.  This is an excellent argument for eliminating the for-profit
      sector from scholarly publishing.  As things stand, some of
      the mega- publishers are already taking in profit margins of
      30% or higher; once you add in taxes, that's at least 50% of
      revenue spent without a dime going to anything having to do
      with scholarship.  That's not even taking into account sales,
      lobbying, etc.!  Add to this even more money going to
      aggressive marketing, and the percentage of the academic
      library budget that actually goes to scholarly aims will be
      very small indeed.

2.  If some publishers take this approach and it drives up costs,
      they won't stand a chance of competing on a per-article basis
      with more efficient publishers, like PLoS - or almost any
      society not-for-profit.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com