On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, Albert Henderson wrote:
> on Fri, 14 Dec 2001 Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_cogprints.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> > "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!
9 cents per article per subscription. For a journal with 2000 print
copies produced, that's $180 per article. For a journal producing
and selling only one print copy, yes 9 cents would be your savings.
At least that's the only way one can possibly understand the numbers in:
>
> [...]
>
> 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]
It does matter what factors are being included in quoted numbers!
Per article in the recent discussion really meant per article,
not per article per subscription, or "price per page" to the library,
as is often quoted.
Arthur
Received on Wed Dec 19 2001 - 10:27:53 GMT