RE: Should university presses adopt an OA model for all of their scholarly books?

["Janet Fisher" <jfisher@pcgplus.com>]

How editorial offices are funded varies widely among university 
presses depending on their contractual arrangements. Many are 
funding editorial office costs at the level quoted by Nawin, 
while some journals do receive substantial subsidies to editorial 
office costs from sponsoring universities.

Janet Fisher
PCG

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2008 6:48 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Should university presses adopt an OA model for all of
their scholarly books?

That may be one difference between commercial publishers and 
university presses, as publishers of journals: the latter usually 
do NOT pay the costs of the editorial office or the salaries of 
managing editor and editorial assistant, nor do they pay for peer 
review other than the costs associated with maintaining a 
software system that the journal editors can use to conduct the 
peer-review process. So, to the extent that universities continue 
to be willing to subsidize those costs, they do not fall due on 
the presses' balance sheets. Nawin's figures are useful, though, 
in revealing what the true total costs may be for journal 
publishing, no matter how those costs may be paid for any given 
journal.

Sandy Thatcher


>Here is an approximation of costs for purposes of this
>discussion:
>
>Managing Editor - ranging from half-time to full-time with an editorial

>assistant - $30,000 to $100,000
>
>Editorial Office - $5,000 to $25,000
>
>Editorial Processing, from acceptance to ready for publishing in print
>and online, including copy-editing and peer review system - ~
>$100/page; ranging from $40,000 (for a quarterly journal with 100
>editorial pages per issue) to $200,000 for around 2,000 editorial pages
>
>Online publishing and the 3 P's associated with printed journal would
>be additional to the above, as would be sales/marketing.
>
>One could argue that these costs are on the high end, but I have a
>feeling that the average for the university presses lies somewhere
>between $15,000 and the example above.
>
>Nawin Gupta