From: Rich Dodenhoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 18:55:39 +0000

Alex,

Commercial publishers are good at expressing an interest in working
with society journals, and they are the publishers society leaders
tend to know.  I can’t remember being approached by a university press
at any of the societies where I have worked.

Rich

Richard Dodenhoff
Journals Director
American Society for Pharmacology
& Experimental Therapeutics
9650 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20814

(t) 301-634-7997

**************

From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Alex Holzman
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2012 9:10 PM
Subject: Re: The politics of journal publishing (music education edition)

Yes, but if not financial motive, why not a university press?  There
are university presses with journals programs in most subjects,
including most of the sciences.  This includes some very large presses
unlikely to be at risk of going out of business.  (I say this as a
press without a journals program so this isn't blatant self-interest.)
 Intended or not, the behavior of learned societies in outsourcing
journals can make it very difficult for the same people to argue
against high commercial press pricing in a different context.  I
worked in university press journals for a number of years and saw more
than one instance of a journal or suite of journals going to a
commercial press solely because the money was better.  How do I know?
The journal owners admitted it quite freely.

And no, taking the money doesn't always connote greed.  If a home
university that previously offered support withdrew all or part of
that support, what was the journal supposed to do to meet costs, from
editorial office expenses to subscription maintainence to marketing?

Whenever university-affiliated folks in any department start to cast
aspersions about the commercial publishing world sucking the
university dry, I think of Shakespeare--"The fault, dear Brutus, lies
not in our stars but in ourselves."

Alex Holzman
Director
Temple University Press

****

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 7:06 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:08:31 +0100

I totally agree with Rich on these two points. I would also add the
financial benefit, not necessarily for more income, but for a reliable
income because a feature of these deals is a guaranteed minimum income.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: Rich Dodenhoff <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:40:58 +0000

Societies may outsource their journals for many reasons.  Some have
only one or two journals, and it isn't cost effective to self-publish.

There is also the often justified fear among society publishers with a
small number of journals that they are being squeezed out of the
market by large package deals from commercial publishers.  Titles from
small nonprofit publishers are often passed over, no matter how low
their price or how high their impact factors, because there isn't much
money left after a library purchases big deals. Nonprofit society
publishers may move to a commercial publisher because they feel that's
the only way their journals will survive.

Richard Dodenhoff
Journals Director
American Society for Pharmacology
& Experimental Therapeutics