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]