Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications Report of a Symposium (2004) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 Costs of Publications
2 Costs of Publications
Pages 9-19
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 9... ...
First are the processing costs for the contents (including articles, 1 This chapter is based on the remarks of Michael Keller, Ida M Green University Librarian at Stanford University and publisher of HighWire Press, who provided a keynote "Overview of the Costs of Publication," as well as on the comments of invited speakers-Kent Anderson, publishing director at the New England Journal of Medicine; Robert Bovenschulte, director, Publications Division, American Chemical Society; Bernard Rous, deputy director and electronic publisher, Association for Computing Machinery; and Gordon Tibbits, president, Blackwell Publishing USA.
|
From page 10... ...
A third category is the cost of Internet publishing services. These are new costs and include many activities performed mainly by machines typically maintained by highly paid technical support staff, though in some situations the publishing staff performs quality control pre- and post-publication to check and fix errors that may have been introduced into the publishing process.
|
From page 11... ...
If all this retrospective conversion of back sets occurred in one year, HighWire would have to spend internally about $250,000 in capital costs and about $300,000 in initial staff costs, declining to annual staff expenditure of perhaps $250,000 or $275,000 thereafter. On average, for the 120 publishers paying for services from HighWire that would mean about an additional $2,500 in new operating costs to HighWire Press each year.
|
From page 12... ...
Other STM journal publishers, however, have indicated that their back-set conversion and subsequent maintenance costs have been considerably higher. THE VALUE OF MAINTAINING THE EXISTING STM JOURNAL PUBLISHING INFRASTRUCTURE Some stakeholders in the STM journals chain believe that in the future articles will be delivered freely to all users, through a diffuse distribution scheme based on authors simply posting their articles on their own Web sites or on an archive like the Cornell e-print arXiv.
|
From page 13... ...
publishes information about health, and if it publishes erroneous articles, these can have serious impacts. Recently, the journal published a set of articles about SARS, Sudden Acute Respiratory Syndrome, within two weeks of receipt from the author, and these were completely peer reviewed, edited, and illustrated papers.
|
From page 14... ...
The concern, however, is that the costs of managing the rising volume of publication will wipe out whatever transitory gains there may be from saving on print costs. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF THE PEER-REVIEW PROCESS The peer-review process is both a significant cost and the highest value added by the journal publishers.
|
From page 15... ...
As far as weaknesses in the peer-review process, or ways in which it could be improved, one of todays' concerns is that time pressures in medicine are so great that finding willing peer reviewers is increasingly difficult. The situation could be improved by educating the scientific community to understand the value of this interaction in the STM publishing process, reflecting that value in the academic rewards system.
|
From page 16... ...
The secondary publishers are vulnerable now, not necessarily because secondary publishing is vulnerable, but because they are competing with primary journal publishers who are, perhaps inadvertently, providing secondary services. Secondary publishing is in some sense merging together with primary publishing, especially in the aggregator business.
|
From page 17... ...
moved to multiple service levels in order to maintain a benefit for personal membership in the organization, as its institutional subscriptions. But differentiating service levels adds real cost and complexity to any journal publishing system.
|
From page 18... ...
Fifth, accounting systems sometimes evolve more slowly than shifts in the publishing process. New costs appropriate to online publications are sometimes allocated to pre-existing print line items.
|
From page 19... ...
COSTS OF PUBLICATION 19 mental business models might provide competitive pressure on traditional business models and pricing is a topic for discussion and examination over time. If publishing costs are to be studied well, however, there must be an acknowledgment of the diversity of the publishing landscape.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.