[Wikimedia-l] (semi-OT) Open access "catastrophic" for Elsevier

[Federico Leva (Nemo)]

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