Tim Starling, 24/09/2012 04:24:
According to the PDF, each published article costs them 1954 GBP, and brings in a revenue of 3256 GBP. A very nice business to be in. They already charge the authors a processing fee of 2000 GBP per article, so they could break even with open access, without increasing the author fee at all. That would be bad for investors, but the company would survive. So maybe it's not quite time to dance on Elselvier's grave.
Indeed, this is not really about higher or lower costs and revenues: it's mainly about a new kind of market and business which Elsevier is not ready for. Other publishers, like Springer, have been wiser and experimented a lot with Open Access: not because they are philanthropists, but to be ready for everything and avoid the risk of being swept away by history.
emijrp, 24/09/2012 09:08:
In the wiki-research mailing list we are talking about Open-Access
journals
and new ways to publish and disseminate research results. A summary is available http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Research_Ideas
Thanks. I've asked a question on talk: it's also relevant for this topic/mailing list if you disagree with my assumption there.
Nemo