Re: Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide

["Sally Morris \(ALPSP\)" <chief-exec@alpsp.org>]

(Sorry for triple posting but this discussion seems to be going on in all
three arenas.. Liblicense, SOAF forum and ALPSP-discuss)

Hmm - Oxford Dictionary:

Heuristic:  serving to discover

I cannot imagine that the authors plucked a figure out of the air
believing it to be misleading.  Surely OSI/SPARC aren't backing off this
figure simply because publishers agree with them?  ;-)

Until this discussion started, they had gone up considerably in many
publishers' eyes for having taken a much more rational approach to costs
than had some other OA enthusiasts;  it would be a pity to undermine this
perception now.

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK

Phone:  +44 (0)1903 871686 Fax:  +44 (0)1903 871457
E-mail:  chief-exec@alpsp.org

> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
> To: <alpsp-discuss@mailbase.org.uk>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 8:53 AM
> Subject: Clarification on misquotation of figure from OSI Guide
>
> [Forwarding from Melissa Hagemann.]
>
> As many of you are aware, the Open Society Institute has sponsored
> business planning guides for open access publishers. Publishers of
> existing and prospective open access journals have found these guides
> useful in exploring potential open access business models.
>
> Unfortunately, the Guide has been misquoted to the effect that the
> authors estimate the cost of a published journal article at $3,750. Such 
> a claim is incorrect. As the Guide text makes abundantly clear, the 
> table containing this number serves only to illustrate a simple method 
> by which such fees may be determined, and all the figures used in the
> illustration are identified as hypothetical.
>
> Citing such a heuristic example will only be perceived as uncritical.
> As all the numbers in the Guide's illustration are contrived and clearly
> identified to be so we obviously adduced no evidence to substantiate
> them.  None of the numbers in the illustration are represented to be 
> industry averages, nor can they reasonably be mistaken as such.
>
> We ask that all those who have been misquoting the OSI Guide desist
> from doing so in the future.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Melissa Hagemann
> Program Manager
> Open Access Project
> Open Society Institute