Re: Another Poynder Eye-Opener on Open Access

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

Well, I wouldn't call it a subsidy, as the term carries the 
connotation that there is something wrong with it.  In any event, 
your experience at Penn State Press is different from PLOS in 
that PLOS owes its (economic) success to the fact that it is a 
branded service: the flagship journals and PLOS One share the 
PLOS name.  With books, people rarely note the name or brand of 
the publisher; and with many journals, the branding is on the 
level of the individual title (which, of course, in some 
instances may bear a publisher's name).  PLOS invested heavily in 
building the PLOS brand, without which I doubt PLOS One would 
have been nearly as successful.

Joe Esposito

On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Sandy Thatcher
<sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:

> I used to say that the "surplus" we made on publishing journals
> at Penn State Press helped subsidize the publication of
> monographs. How would you analyze that, Joe?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>