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

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From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2017 21:03:17 -0400

I don't know what Hindawi's finances look like, but if they indeed
have a 50% margin, more power to them. But let't not overlook that
Hindawi is an open access publisher. High margins at H, if they indeed
have them, thus cannot be due to a monopoly or the sale of
aggregations.

In general, I find discussions of publishing not to be anchored in
evidence. That doesn't mean that the positions of OA advocates are
wrong; it simply means that they are ill-informed.

Joe Esposito