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Re: Ocean Science from EGU
Dear David
That is most helpful. I was looking in the wrong place i.e. in a section
called General Terms for EGU Submissions. I did not drill down
sufficiently.
I agree that most new journals do not make money for many years but it
would worry me as a publisher if there were only 11 papers published at
this stage in the first year of the journal. Perhaps the editors are not
receiving any honorarium? Perhaps the costs of the various electronic
systems are not being applied? It would be great to know more.
I also note that Copernicus, the publisher (is that a publishing arm of
the EGU?) publish a string of OA journals only a few years old - see
http://www.copernicus.org/COPERNICUS/publications/publication_journals.html.
They seem to be composed of special issues or perhaps even conference
proceedings. I wonder if the economics of these are better.
I do not think it is a good idea to minimise the importance of a
sustainable model. Maybe quite a number of smaller societies expect to
make a loss on their publications. BioOne came into existence because
societies had not build in a surplus that enabled them to invest in going
online.
The larger and (generally) the more important societies (who do make a
surplus) are often genuinely interested in the OA model as I think DC
Principles and various ALPSP statements have proved, but cannot afford to
make a loss by giving up the subscription model without some evidence of
success with another model. OK - the JISC study written by Mary Waltham
takes it as axiomatic than the subscription model is not sustainable, but
this is not how publishers generally see the picture and not all
librarians do either. As I understand it the burden of the recent Royal
Society statement (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3882) is that
adopting policies that undermine the subscription model is ill-advised
until the alternative model has proved itself. This seems to me prudent.
I happen to believe that the author-pays model is inferior to the
reader-pays model in the context of scholarly communication, for reasons
that I have set out in this list, but the official policy of publishing
bodies is to be business neutral and this is the position held by most
publishers I know and you know.
Anthony
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Prosser" <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 11:51 PM
Subject: RE: Ocean Science from EGU
> 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