From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]> Date: Thu, 10 Aug 2017 08:58:15 +0000 Elsevier’s revenues and profits are a matter of public record. It is hard to see how open access advocates, or others, can be ill-informed on this. Joe claims to know "of many publishers (professional societies and university presses) that lose money on journals”. But wouldn’t it be better to base this discussion on publicly available data rather than anecdote? Way, way back in 2004 ALPSP and Blackwell (as was) surveyed journal-owning societies. Two-thirds made a surplus and the mean surplus was 15%. (Although I would note that there were only 68 respondents and the responses may well be skewed towards larger societies who have a better understanding of their finances and the time to respond to surveys.) It looks as if the report is only available to ALSPS members: https://www.alpsp.org/reports-publications/what-do-societies-do-with-their-publishing-surpluses-alpsp-and-blackwell-survey-2004/125790 I don’t know if there have been more recent comparable studies David On 9 Aug 2017, at 21:07, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 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