Re: Savings from Converting to On-Line-Only: 30%- or 70%+ ?

From: Arthur Smith <apsmith_at_APS.ORG>
Date: Thu, 24 Sep 1998 14:37:25 -0400

On Thu, 24 Sep 1998 05:32:38 -0400, Albert Henderson <NobleStation_at_compuserve.com> <harnad_at_COGSCI.SOTON.AC.UK> wrote:

>My notes from editors' reports published in the Bulletin of the
>American Physical Society indicate the following circulation
>figures for nonmember sales of Physical Review:
> [numbers...]

good - looks like I was only 10% high in my estimate. But remember
those numbers are not totally comparable with one another because
some libraries buy only a selection of the journals, and member
subscriptions were probably an important factor in cost and revenue
before about 1970. The conclusion of relatively fixed
cost per page (now around $160 +- 40) over 40-50 years seems pretty
robust though.

>While rechecking your figures you might also want to take a close
>look at who is disbursing the page charge payments you'd like to
>hang your new hat on. What will they do once they have squeezed
>every nickle out of the libraries?

Hey, you've got the wrong person here - I don't think switching
to page charge support is a good idea at all, or even workable,
as I've argued earlier in this forum. But I am willing to accept
I might be wrong on this...

               Arthur (apsmith_at_aps.org)
Received on Tue Aug 25 1998 - 19:17:43 BST