Self-correction (RE: Costs of open access publishing - the Wellcome Trust)

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

Sorry, everyone -- my reference to "PLoS' price hike" below was
ill-informed.  I should have said "PLoS' pricing."  In other words, the
fact that PLoS feels it necessary to charge $1,500 is evidence that OA
advocates' earlier cost estimates ($500 per article) were too optimistic.  
PLoS has never, to my knowledge, hiked its author charges.

----
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
University of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu 
> Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 3:06 PM
> To: David Goodman; liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: Costs of open access publishing - the Wellcome Trust
> 
> What model?  I've proposed no model.  I'm simply predicting 
> that when we finally arrive at a workable OA system, the 
> price of a typical OA journal will be somewhere between the 
> lowest numbers proposed by OA advocates and the price of an 
> average Elsevier journal.  This prediction is hardly built on 
> anything as rigorous as an economic model -- it's based on 
> two simple observations, neither of which I think should be 
> very controversial even in this forum: 1) That Elsevier's 
> journal prices are, on average, quite a bit higher than they 
> really need to be (can I not get an amen?); and 2) that there 
> is no way to publish a journal without charging higher prices 
> than most OA advocates anticipate.  I base the latter of 
> those two observations on the fact that most OA advocates 
> have never actually published a journal and will, therefore, 
> generally tend to be overoptimistic about sustainable 
> pricing.  I think PLoS' price hike tends to support that proposition.

[SNIP]