Re: Journal costs

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Norm MacLeod wrote:

>Stefan and I really agree on most aspects of the coming brave new world of
>paleo. publishing, we just like needling each other over the relative
>merits of electronic and print formats. ;-> I agree that we should not
>wholly abandon print publishing in paleo. I don't think I said that we
>should take such a drastic step in my post. Only that electronic publishing
>is an obvious way to break out of the print publishing cycle of cost
>increases without sacrificing quality. On this score I would take the same
>broad view of "electronic publishing" that Stefan does and include
>print-on-demand, access-on-demand, technologies, even if the final product
>is contained on a piece of paper. After all, I can print the full text,
>graphics, tables, etc. of any article published on the WWW, on demand, on
>my laserprinter.
>
>However, the other point I was trying to make is that from the librarian's
>perspective, electronic publishing may not be the panacea it is sometimes
>promoted as. There can be real and substantial costs that lie in wait for
>libraries who want to be able to collect and provide access to large
>numbers of electronic publications. Whether or not these expenses occur is
>to a large extent dependent on what the librarians mean by "providing
>access" to electronic publications. If all this means is that you'll be
>able to walk over to the library and check out a CD just as you would a
>book or a journal volume, perhaps electronic publishing can make a big
>savings in library budgets. However, if "access" is defined to mean the
>sorts of things Stefan is talking about in his post, or even simple network
>access to the electronic copy in the library's collections, then we're off
>into another high-tech world and the price tags that go with it. Which one
>is it going to be (or which combination of the two)? This is an aspect of
>electronic publication that I don't think gets nearly enough attention.
>Since electronic journals are already a reality in many fields, how are
>libraries handling things now? How do they expect to handle them in the
>future? I definitely want to see electronic publishing take off in a big
>way in paleo. Therefore, I'm concerned about this issue.

My mistake, Norm, we were in fact talking about somewhat different issues:
I was referring to costs on the producing side, where I don't think
abandoning paper will save us any dough, whereas you had been talking about
the receiving side where you fear abandoning paper won't save us much dough
either. I'm afraid we're both right: Moving from paper-based to electronic
publishing will not lead to any reduced total costs for publishing. The
promise, instead, is improved efficiency of electronic publication: Users
will have quicker, wider and more dynamic access to scientific information,
which will create new research tools and change the way we do science.

The trick will be to manage the transition so that we won't leave half of
the crew (scientists with limited net access, libraries with no funds to
invest in new technology, countries with poor electronic infrastructure)
behind. I think we have to strive for a model where at least for the
foreseeable future the most important information will always be available
on paper. In the long run, however, the greater efficiency of the
electronic medium should make it easier and cheaper, not harder and more
expensive, to obtain the information you need wherever you are. (I'm sure
it's even today easier to find an Internet connection than a copy of
Fossils and Strata in Burkina Faso.)

Another trick of course will be to manage the transition so that we don't
find ourselves drowning in an informational quagmire ...

To go back to the original and more pressing matter of journal costs:
Without defending what some refer to as a ruthless overpricing strategy of
certain publishers (vide Phyllis Vicars's posting through Mark Filewicz on
January 15th), I suspect that the prices of these journals  from the "Low
Countries Mafia" more accurately reflect the total costs than do those of
the less-expensive society-run journals. The latter journals depend heavily
on voluntary work within the societies and on institutional support,
whereas the commercial publishers have to meet their total costs. The total
production costs for the two types of journals may be roughly the same.
(The number of subscribers is of course also an important factor.)



Stefan Bengtson
Department of Palaeozoology
Swedish Museum of Natural History
Box 50007
S-104 05 Stockholm
Sweden

tel. +46-8 666 42 20
     +46-18 54 99 06 (home)
fax  +46-8 666 41 84
e-mail Stefan.Bengtson@nrm.se