From: T Scott Plutchak <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2019 11:27:50 -0600

I’m reminded of the time some years ago when a colleague made a motion
during the Medical Library Association business meeting that MLA stop
allowing publishers with unacceptably high margins to exhibit at the annual
meeting.  When queried about what an acceptable threshold might be, there
was no clear answer.  Marty Frank (formerly with the American Physiological
Society) mentioned one time in a presentation that the APS bylaws specified
that the journals program recover a certain surplus – I think it was 8%.
This was then used to help fund some of the various other educational
activities the Society engaged in.  Of course, for some of my librarian
colleagues, even that amount is too high.  But that’s an emotional
argument, not an economic one.


T Scott Plutchak
Librarian
Epistemologist
Birmingham, Alabama
[log in to unmask]
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233
http://tscott.typepad.com



On Jan 30, 2019, at 6:49 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2019 13:09:30 -0700

The estimable Peter Potter of Virginia Tech was on our campus last week for
an excellent talk and discussion on current issues in open access.  A few
questions from the discussion might have wider interest and I'd be glad for
comments.

1.  We are now regularly reminded of the size of the profit margins of
major publishers.  There seems wide agreement that a margin over 30% is
problematic.  What would be an acceptable profit margin for a publisher to
sustain without remonstration?

2.  In the current negotiations, Plan S or otherwise, the current
publishers look to maintain their role in the marketplace for information,
while switching, flipping, or transforming their business models.  What if
a major publisher with a high profit margin were to devise a model that
provided full and immediate and S-compliant open access, but it emerged
that their profit margin either stayed about the same or increased?  What
should be the position of libraries and research institutions in that
eventuality?

3.  If we imagine a successful transformation of a very high percentage of
current journal publication to S-compliant open access, should we expect or
hope that the quantity of articles published will increase, decrease, or
stay about the same?  Would a decrease be acceptable?

Jim O'Donnell
ASU