From: leo waaijers <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2017 08:47:36 +0200

@ Jan Erik,

"So it is up to libraries and other buyers or buyers' representatives
to work towards such a change." Which is, "the creating of a
competitive market"

But there is such a market place already: www.qoam.eu. This market
place is based on academic crowd sourcing. Libraries are asked to
complete Base Score Cards, measuring the transparancy of a journal's
web site with respect to editorial board, peer review, governance and
workflow. Authors are asked to share their experience with a journal
they published in via Valuation Score Cards. The market place also
gives the publication fees for a journnal, including the price effects
of memberships, licences and offseting deals.

Smaller publishers react positively and are prepared to cooperate,
e.g. by inviting their authors to score the journals or to submit the
discounts for member institutions. Libraries remain passive, in
general. Alas.

Best,
Leo.



Op 11-8-2017 om 2:14 schreef LIBLICENSE:

From: "Jan Erik Frantsvåg" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:20:50 +0000

Joe, you are right:
High profit margins at Hindawi cannot be a result of their controlling
a monopoly (or sale of aggregations). But only to a degree: They could
be (and I believe they must be) a result of high prices in the
publishing market, not connected to high costs but to monopolistic
competition. No need for H to set much lower prices than competitors,
but with low costs they can earn much money as long as pricing in the
market is set by the large players who control monopolies, and how
have high costs, often for historical reasons.

The numbers I found some years ago indicated that Hindawi's 50 per
cent profit margin came from APCs lower than Elsevier's per article
profit. Which means that there is much room for cost-cutting and
lowering of prices if a competitive marked for APCs can be created.

The larger publishers won't have the creating of a competitive market
high on their agenda, quite the opposite. So it is up to libraries and
other buyer's or buyers' representatives to work towards such a
change.

Best,
Jan Erik