From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:51:32 +0100

Dear Sandy

If you read my post again I did say "rarely". I imagine that it is because
journal articles often have a number of authors and also are much shorter
than a book. It is usually the same with authors in multi-authored books. It
is also because publishers do not usually have a royalty arrangement with
either group. To give all these people a share must have been at a
considerable cost in the past for very little income.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 00:21:05 -0500

It is not universally true that revenues from reprint and other subsidiary
rights sales are not shared with authors of journal articles.  In this
respect, at Penn State University Press, we treated our journal authors in
the same way as we treated our book authors, sharing income from most
subsidiary rights 50/50. We are not the only publisher that pursued this
practice either. It is not clear to me why most publishers decided not to
treat journal and book authors the same way. Perhaps some other publisher
can explain the rationale for the difference in treatment.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 11:56:39 +0100
>
> I have been away and only just seen this David. Yes of course you are
> being mischievous and yes it is a fair point and yes reprint revenue
> rarely goes to authors. As far as I can remember I have never
> published a journal where a share of this income goes to authors but
> it does quite frequently go to learned society owners. It is usually part
of the partnership deal.
>
> However as you know from your time in publishing that publishers do
> take a lot of interest in what academics want because they did think
> they were dependent on the views of academics as authors. If authors
> as editors, reviewers or contributors rejected subscription based
> journals the journals would fold. The assumption was (as you will
> recall) that academics would vote by taking their articles elsewhere -
> to open access journals. Now they have realised that they are in large
> part dependent on funders of research.
>
> The funders of research know what they do is right (listen to Wellcome
> speakers) and they could not care less whether the people who do the
> research they fund want. They hold the money.
>
> Anthony