From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2015 14:38:41 -0500

It's expected that new journals will take a while to establish
themselves and get to the point of producing a surplus. In older times
this was expected to be, for most new journals, about three to five
years. I don't know what the expectations are today. I would be
surprised if any university press with a journals program were
operating it overall at a loss. Usually, such programs are counted on
to produce surpluses to generate a subsidy for the losing monograph
side of the business. Many years ago, the AAUP Journals Committee
conducted an annual survey to gather this kind of information, but I
don't believe that survey has ever been resurrected and the old data
would not be of much value now, except for historians.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 6 Mar 2015 15:50:28 +0000
>
> Dear Collective Wisdom,
>
> I recently heard a presentation by a learned-society officer who
> mentioned, in passing, that many society and non-profit scholarly
> publishers are operating some or all of their journals at a loss. This
> took me a bit by surprise; I've never doubted that there are scholarly
> journals out there not earning their keep financially (and being kept
> afloat for purposes of mission rather than revenue), but I got the
> impression that there may be more of these out there than I thought.
>
> Has anyone studied this? Is there data out there on the
> number/percentage of scholarly journals that are subsidized by their
> host organizations rather than generating a surplus for them?
>
> Thanks in advance for any leads on this.
>
> ---
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
> Marriott Library, University of Utah
> [log in to unmask]