The simple point about paying attention to the amount, not just the percentage, is an important one.
This is advice I have often given to librarians with respect to subscriptions: if a publisher is charging $1 million per year, then an 8% increase is $80,000. If a journal subscription is $100, then an 80% increase would be $80. If you need to ask a department to cover the increase as your library budget is flat, the 8% increase from the high-cost publisher is enough that the department may not be able to hire a new junior faculty member, while an 80% increase for a $100 junior might come out of the photocopy budget. This is not an unrealistic scenario. There are still many not-for-profit subscription journals with prices in the $100 range, while there are a few publishers with such high costs that even a small percentage increase is a substantive amount. Even a 1% increase for a $1 million subscription is $10,000. Note that I am also working on tracking OA APCs. There are good reasons to think that moving to this model will open up competition, however if existing publishers simply change business models, charge high APCs and increase at rates above inflation year after year, I don't think we should make any assumptions. I argue that we can have both OA and a much more cost-effective system, but this will not simply happen on its own. Wise policy and prudent spending decisions are essential. best, Heather Morrison On 2013-10-04, at 8:09 AM, "Frantsvåg Jan Erik" <jan.e.frants...@uit.no<mailto:jan.e.frants...@uit.no>> wrote: I strongly support David here – and I do have some background in economics. While profit margins could be compared in percentages, that is not always relevant, especially when the scales are so different as between Hindawi and Elsevier. One can actually compare dollars, and see who gets the most out of science … An interesting aspect is that while Elsevier’s profits demonstrate the strength of monopolistic competition and is something we should be wary of, Hindawi’s shows that there will be room for new entrants to the OA business, this has the potential of driving prices (costs, to us in science) down. (Publishers will of course strive to try to prevent this, but we should see it as an opportunity.) Seeing this as an irrelevant fact seems a bit narrow-minded? Best, Jan Erik Fra: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] På vegne av David Prosser Sendt: 4. oktober 2013 10:27 Til: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Emne: [GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits Jeffrey "Ignoratio elenchi"? That's from Harry Potter, right? Spell meaning 'facts be gone'? Heather is interested in the flow of money out of academia. If that is your area of interest then the profit margins of large commercial, legacy publishers are clearly of more interest than the profit margins of other players. From the figures I quote (from your blog), Hindawi takes $300 of profit from each paper it publishers. A large commercial, legacy publisher takes about $1200*. From where I sit (and I admit my knowledge of economics is almost as bad as that of Latin) it is clear that $1200 per paper is a significantly larger amount than $300 per paper and there is no way the figures back up your contention that 'It appears that the money is just moving from one set of publishers to another.' David *My conservative guess - happy to have people with access to the figures correct this. It's basically 30% of $4000 On 3 Oct 2013, at 23:04, Beall, Jeffrey wrote: David, Thank you for your ignoratio elenchi. --Jeffrey From: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of David Prosser Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 3:03 PM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Scholars jobs not publisher profits Jeffrey in the comment section to your post Ahmed Hindawi points out that the average revenue per paper published by Hindawi is about $600. For people like Elsevier it is in excess of $4000 per paper. I think it is clear which publisher is taking (significantly) more money out of the system. David On 3 Oct 2013, at 20:31, Beall, Jeffrey wrote: Heather: I’ve documented<http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/04/04/hindawis-profits-are-larger-than-elseviers/> that Hindawi’s profit margin is higher than Elsevier’s. So, I am correct in assuming that you include Hindawi in your advice below, no? Also, it’s been revealed that a number of the higher ups at PLOS are drawing salaries of over a quarter-million dollars a year, and one was even drawing a salary of over a half-million dollars. It appears that the money is just moving from one set of publishers to another. Thanks, Jeffrey Beall From: goal-boun...@eprints.org<mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org> [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: Thursday, October 03, 2013 11:43 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Scholars jobs not publisher profits My reaction to the EBSCO report on expected ongoing high price increases by some in the scholarly publishing sector at the same time that academics at my alma mater have been asked to consider voluntary severance has been posted to my blog: http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/10/scholars-lets-keep-our-jobs-and-ditch.html My conclusion: It is time for scholars, university administrators and research funders to wake up and realize that creation of new knowledge is done by researchers, not publishers. Don't give up your job or or let your colleagues give up theirs without demanding that the large commercial scholarly publishers give up their 30-40% profit margins. best, -- Dr. Heather Morrison Assistant Professor École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies University of Ottawa http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html heather.morri...@uottawa.ca<mailto:heather.morri...@uottawa.ca> ALA Accreditation site visit scheduled for 30 Sept-1 Oct 2013 / Visite du comité externe pour l'accréditation par l'ALA est prévu le 30 sept-1 oct 2013 http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/accreditation.html http://www.esi.uottawa.ca/accreditation.html <ATT00001..txt> <ATT00001..txt> _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org<mailto:GOAL@eprints.org> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
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