On Sat, 15 Dec 2001, Eberhard R. Hilf wrote: > deat Arthur, > what would be a very rough estimate if APS would let their journals free > online but print costly and therefore raise the membership fee of APS by > what amount. > [Numbers such as: DPG has 40.000 members, fee raising by 10 % would amount > to 200.000 $ or 200 articles..]
Hi Eberhard, I'm not sure I understand the question. If we didn't print at all and tried to cover only our "electronic costs", and if we somehow miraculously got those down to 50% of current costs, that would still amount to about $13 million per year, or $325 for every current member, per year. Given that current dues are only about $100 per year our members would probably not take kindly to a 325% increase (and many have discounted memberships being students, retired, etc.) and we could well end up stuck in pretty much the same spiral we are in with libraries, ending up with perhaps 2000 members each of who is paying $6500/year. Our membership department would not be happy with this, to say the least... In reality we are sneaking in something rather like this by allowing members to subscribe to the journals in electronic form only, even though their libraries already have subscriptions... but again that gets into the sponsorship vs. subscription battle, tragedy of the commons issues (why should <b>I</b> pay for other people's work...), etc. I hope that answers the question if I didn't completely misunderstand, thanks, Arthur