[Tccc] Research without Walls

Joe Touch touch
Tue Oct 25 18:24:39 EDT 2011


One final point:

On 10/25/2011 2:32 PM, Jakob Eriksson wrote:
>
> On Oct 25, 2011, at 12:45 PM, Joe Touch wrote:
...
>> A lot of publishers - and authors - make money selling books.
>> Journals are often loss-leaders. That's what I've heard. I appreciate
>> that I don't have inside info on this, but absent that info you're
>> tarring an entire industry inappropriately.
>
> I didn't want to make the message too long. However, the same
> colleague provided the following numbers:
>
> "An Elsevier statement from 2007 says that Elsevier's 'Science and
> Technology' division contributed 51% of 'total Elsevier revenue' and
> that 77% of this 51% was from journals. An Elsevier statement in July
> 2009 said that "electronic revenue" from academics and governments "has
> grown to approximately 90% of Elsevier's total journal revenue.' "

Revenue != profit.

Revenue is the income *before* costs are subtracted.

>> ...
>> Here are some numbers on how much my university library pays for our various subscriptions:
>>
>> Elsevier: $1,235,800
>> Springer: ~$700,000 (estimated)
>> IEEE: $93,497.50
>> ACM: $4,579.86

The IEEE and ACM are membership organizations with dues and conferences 
that help subsidize other costs. Elsevier and Springer are book 
publishing houses. The finance model of the two are quite different.

Specific costs charged are also a function of the number of papers 
available. The IEEE is a larger organization than the ACM (400K vs. 
100K), and Xplore is larger than DL (3M docs vs. ~200K).

However, note that RwW lumps them all into one category - 
charge-for-access.

...
> To me, it is not about the price, it is about ownership. I want to
> retain ownership of the documents that I created. At the very least, I
> should have an absolute right to publish them for free, unrestricted
> download directly from my webpage.

You should review the IEEE's policy on this issue. You already have that 
right, with the SOLE exception of the final copy developed by the IEEE - 
which applies only to journals, and I doubt your final submitted version 
is sufficiently different to cause the reader discomfort.

Joe



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