RE: Ocean Science from EGU

["David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>]

Anthony

Details of the author charges for Ocean Science are here:

http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/os/guidelines_for_manuscript_and_article.html#chapter7

On the peer review system, you may be interested in an article written by 
Ulrich Poschl describing the system for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 
another journal from the EGU that uses the same system:

"Interactive journal concept for improved scientific publishing 
<http://www.copernicus.org/EGU/acp/poeschl_learned_publishing_2004.pdf> 
and quality assurance" Ulrich Poschl, Learned Publishing, 17, 105-113, 
April 2004 (invited article)

I'm afraid you do overestimate my reach as I am not privy to the finances 
of the EGU.  However, I can make two general points.  The first is that as 
this is a new journal in its first year I would be amazed if it was not 
being subsidised by the EGU.  New subscription journals take on average 
seven years to reach the point where they break-even.  It would be wrong I 
think to expect any new title, even an open access one, to be in the black 
in the first year.

The second is that, as you say, any society is perfectly entitled to 
subsidise their titles if they wish.  You will recall that the recent 
ALPSP/Blackwell survey 'What do societies do with their publishing 
surpluses' (http://www.alpsp.org/news/NFPsurvey-summaryofresults.pdf) 
found that for a third of respondents there was no surplus - i.e., the 
journals were being subsidised by the societies.  I'm not sure what 
conclusions you would reach from that about the sustainability of the 
subscription model!

Best wishes

David C Prosser PhD
Director
SPARC Europe
E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
http://www.sparceurope.org