on Fri, 14 Dec 2001 Stevan Harnad <har...@cogprints.soton.ac.uk> wrote: > On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Andrew Odlyzko wrote: > > > In general, I agree that to operate the way APS does, it costs around > > $800-$1500 per article. However, that does not preclude less expensive > > modes of operation, either with lower quality, or with shifting some > > of the explicit financial costs that APS incurs into hidden subsidies > > from editors and the like. > > And there may be even more natural ways for covering the remaining > costs if they are partitioned in a more appropriate way for the new > media (as a SERVICE fee for an outgoing submitted draft instead of an > access fee for an incoming PRODUCT): > > "4. Whereas all refereed research should be fully accessible > on-line without cost to all would-be users worldwide, it is > nevertheless not altogether costless to produce. The main change is > that dissemination and archiving cost incomparably less on-line > than on-paper and hence the on-line dissemination/archiving costs > per article effectively shrink to zero. > http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/enews/aug01.html#6
[snip] You can claim to save only 9 cents per article with online distribution! More than that was probably spent on equipment, software, and the cost of paper and printing. King, McDonald and Roder estimated the pre-Internet costs of U S science journals. They put per-article prerun costs at $1050 in 1977; runoff costs were $0.09. [SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS IN THE UNITED STATES. 1981. p. 218-219] Albert Henderson Former Editor, PUBLISHING RESEARCH QUARTERLY 1994-2000 <70244.1...@compuserve.com>