Commercial

Economics of Academic Publishing

Research/public Funds

Researchers

Articles

Editors/Referees

Stockholders/Executives

Society journals and academic presses

Libraries

Recent developments

(1985-2005):

profit/revenue of 31%

CEO salaries of $10 M

Word processing

(LaTeX, Word)

annual 10%

journal price

increases

Publishers

The Web, arxiv, new publishing models

Thanks to Ted Bergstrom, UCSB

Comparison of Five Nonlinear Journals

*Some adjustments may be required to reflect “bundling”. Chaos prices are from 2005.

Main trends continue to hold, with ratio of 3-10 between highest and lowest cost/page.

What can we do?

Consider subscription prices when submitting to journals

Submit preprints to open access archives

Post preprints on website

Limit refereeing to low cost/page journals (with letter of explanation)

Request journals to lower subscriptions to inflation-adjusted 1990 prices

Resign en masse, taking journal to non-profit publisher (Knuth, LaTeX)

Publicize cost/page of journals

Set cost/page cutoff for subscriptions

Authors

Referees

Editors

Libraries

Google “Crisis in scientific publication” or similar

2005-05-22T06:43:15