Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy

From: Jan Velterop <jan_at_BIOMEDCENTRAL.COM>
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 21:42:04 -0000

 Mark,

The actual price per article is very much dependent on the scale and
efficiency of the operation, given that so much of the cost is fixed (the
system) or quasi-fixed (staff). The $500 per article of BMC is based on
assumptions of scale which we believe are achievable within a reasonable
amount of time. These assumptions are ambitious, but not overly so. There is
a lower limit to those economies of scale, though, because of basic
technical and production costs and the like, and that lower limit now seems
to be under $500, but only just. This may change over time (in either
direction, I might add), but is unlikely to result in costs that are
massively lower or higher.

For now, the fee per article is only charged per published article (at least
at BMC). That still is a (pragmatic) inconsistency in the input-paid model
that eventually needs to be addressed, either by charging a higher fee
proportional in some way with the rejection rate of a journal, or a
non-refundable portion of the per article charge even if the article is
rejected.

Jan Velterop
BioMed Central

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Doyle
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Sent: 1/10/03 7:01 PM
Subject: Re: Nature's vs. Science's Embargo Policy

Greetings,

On Friday, January 10, 2003, at 01:00 PM, David Goodman wrote:

> For one thing, probably $500 is nearer the real cost than $1500;

Well, you have to cover rejections as well as accepted articles. $1500
is about what it costs APS per published article ( this covers
ALL costs associated with our journal publications, including rejections
which cost more on average to peer review than accepted articles and
it assumes all income would come from submission side charges for
accepted articles only).

I do find the BioMedCentral figure of $500 interesting though. Is that
partly subsidized by advertising or other revenues? Jan, do you have
a per-published article cost that you can share? Does that $500 apply
to all submissions or only accepted ones?

> for another, reducing the cost to $500 might possibly offer some
> savings to
> institutions as a whole and $1500 certainly would not.
Received on Fri Jan 10 2003 - 21:42:04 GMT