Pricing For Profit: The Dilemma Of Commercial Science Publishers

Over the past two to three years, commercial publishers have been called a lot of names: greedy, rapacious, price-gouging, and so forth. Usually these remarks are made when comparing commercial journal prices with the prices of journals published by those who have the advantage of the high moral ground: learned societies. Why, it is asked (or, worse, not asked), does an American Chemical Society journal cost perhaps 10 cents per page, while an ier journal costs 25 cents per page? Let me quickly review the very great differences between the cost and revenue structures of society and nonsociety publishers. Societies gain revenues from several sources: member subscriptions (or dues); nonmember individual subscriptions; library subscriptions; author page charges; reprints; and advertising. In addition, they have postal subsidies and pay little or no taxes. [By contrast], commercial publishers generally have revenue from only two sources: library subscriptions and reprints. We generally collect no page charges (not because we do not want to have them, but most researchers outside the U.S. have few resources to pay them and our author base is more international), we receive no postal subsidies, and we are certainly fully taxed. More important, commercial research journals have little or no advertising. Again, this is not because we do not want advertising, but without the large individual subscription base, these journals cannot attract advertising. To show the differences by way of example, consider two ier journals. Biochemica Et Biophysica Acta is a very large journal that has only library subscribers; its per-page price in 1988 was 25 cents. In the same year, we published the official Journal of the American College of Cardiology, which had 2,000 pages of advertising to defray costs, resulting in a library subscription price of only 3 cents per text page. Both journals are published by ier: the difference is in the number of individual subscribers and the advertising revenues possible in a journal with a large society membership base. You may notice I haven't mentioned profits at all yet. This is because the differences there are somewhat smaller than one might expect. First, most large societies use their journals as sources of surplus income, money to fund other operations, and are, therefore, priced to make a profit - a typically untaxed profit, I remind you. Second, most large commercial publishers have a mix of profitable, break-even, and unprofitable titles. Certainly, commercial publishers have a more obvious interest or need to make profits, but that aspect has been greatly exaggerated. It is not the profit motive that accounts for most of the differences in prices between society and nonsociety journals: It is the different underlying publishing economics. We believe there is a need in the market - for both authors and readers - for heterogeneity, and the presence of a wide range of journals from different types of publishers serves that function. Regarding page charges, most American society journals charge an author a fixed per-page fee, and an author may easily pay a society $1,000 or more to get a single article published. Most commercial publishers have no page charges. On the surface, the most visible consequence is a higher subscription price to the library for the commercial journal. But remember that the $1,000 spent from grant funds to subsidize the publication of a single article would, if spent instead by the library on a subscription from a company such as ier, have bought a year of a journal containing hundreds of articles. The academic community is funding the publishing process: The question is whether it is funding it from grants or library funds. To the extent that page charges paid from grant funds reduce the subscription price not only to American university libraries but also to all other subscribers, including industry and foreign institutions, then the grants are subsidizing these other entities - which may be appropriate social policy, but should be understood as such. Karen Hunter is vice president of ier Science Publishers B.V. in New York.

Pricing For Profit: The Dilemma Of Commercial Science Publishers

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