From: "Hamaker, Charles" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2015 23:01:39 +0000

Keith Courtney (whom some of you may remember from Taylor and Francis)
at a NASIG conference in Ohio introduced me to a different way of
thinking about journals and publisher profitability. He compared
journals to fishing and said you put a lot of lines in the water and
when the big one hits it makes a lot if money and covers all the cost
of all the small ones and ensures a profit. I don't know how the
calculus has changed with big deals but I suspect not much. He also
with real spreadsheets showed Deana Astle and me how they allocated
overhead costs. By that way of accounting some journals never made a
profit. Again I doubt much has changed in the philosophies behind the
accounting for profit and loss even for larger societies and
associations.

If the desire is there the accounting for profit and loss isn't much
different than the motion picture industry or the music industry.
Chuck

-------- Original message --------
From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Mar 2015 19:58:31 +0000

Dear Rick,

It depends what you mean by operating at a loss I am afraid.

It is a problem that impacts on all publishers not just not for
profits. You can for example argue that a journal that is well thought
of in the discipline but is in a small sub discipline will never make
a real profit/surplus if one allocates overheads ruthlessly but if it
is part of an important programme and needs nothing or little in the
way of specific marketing let it continue.

My impression is that even commercial publishers change their views on
what to do with such journals from time to time and are sometimes
tougher than at other times. Some learned societies do terminate
journals. Some commercial publishers try an open access model. There
are all sort of permutations.

I would also suggest that most journals lists are carried by a few
highly profitable journals while the rest contribute little. This is
true for commercial and for not-for-profits. I have headed up journals
in both categories.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
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]