From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>:
Date: Sun, 4 Nov 2012 23:16:26 +0000

Sorry Joe and everyone else. I was not referring to APC costs (which have
gone up and also gone down depending on the publisher) but to costs per
article for libraries under the subscription model over the last few
decades. We know the costs of journals has gone up but we also know that the
number of articles in the journals have increased. The cost per article to
libraries is an indication is a better indication of wickedness among
publishers than the cost per journal unless you believe as some seem to do
that it is in the interest of publishers to fill journals with a lot of
rubbish which will have a very bad effect on impact factors. Someone
somewhere must have done the sums - surely

Anthony

-----Original Message-----

From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 20:17:14 -0400

I wouldn't worry too much about increases in article prices for Gold
author-pays OA.   Those prices are bound to drop quite a bit.  It's a
commodity business:  one hosting service is as good as another.  You could
be selling bags of rice.

Joe Esposito


On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 5:33 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: ANTHONY WATKINSON <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2012 10:06:17 +0000
>
> Has anyone worked out cost per article increases? I am sure there has
> been an increase and I would not be surprised if it was over (US)
> inflation?
>
> Anthony
>
> ________________________________
> From: Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:47:47 +0000
>
> I thought the video was engaging and had good visual impact. I liked
> the animation.
>
> I disagree somewhat with Sandy's views. The increase in submitted
> output was ruthlessly exploited by publishers: firstly, by hiking
> prices of existing journals to disproportionate levels; secondly, by
> using the advent of online databases to produce more and more
> journals, which may or may not be of high quality. Bulking up the
> overall journal numbers allowed publishers to charge ever-higher
> prices on the basis that there was extra content; and thirdly, annual
> percentage increases are often way above inflation. There are other
> things wrong within scholarly publishing that contribute to the
> situation we are in (such as the conflation between journal citations
> and research funding), but in the case of pricing I think the traditional
publishers are the main culprits.
>
> I've worked with libraries all over the world and under-funding has
> never been a major complaint; rather, that budgets will simply never
> keep pace with the insatiable demands of subscriptions.
>
> I agree that article processing charges that are set too high risk
> becoming barriers in their own right.
>
> DAN SCOTT
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2012 15:01:48 -0500
>
> A useful video to explain the basics of open access to people who
> haven't heard about it before, but as a publisher I naturally find
> that it oversimplifies some important points. E.g., it implies that
> publishers alone are to blame for the increasing costs (and hence
> prices) of publishing scientific articles, without mentioning anywhere
> the rate of increase in the production of articles by scientists who
> want to get them published and the reaction by publishers to launch
> new journals and expand the size of already existing ones.  Nor does
> it mention the practice of universities underfunding both their
> libraries and their own presses (while they are happy to spend lots more
on football and basketball teams).
>
> The question of how taxpayer-funded research can best be disseminated
> in unrestricted form is never addressed either, such as the
> longstanding proposal to require that all researchers be required to
> submit final reports and that those reports be made freely available
immediately upon submission.
> And while it acknowledges that publishing costs money, there is no
> acknowledgment that OA approaches may exacerbate some problems--like
> drawing money out of research funding to support article publication
> charges--while ameliorating others.  Hence I would hardly call this
> video a balanced presentation.
>
> Sandy Thatcher