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The OSA Publishing Enterprise: Some Facts, Figures, and Economics

The OSA Publishing Enterprise: Some Facts, Figures, and Economics. Ted Bergstrom. Good News. In 2008 OSA published 6 of the 12 top optics journals as measured either by citations or eigenfactor . Total subscriptions to OSA journals have increased since 2004.

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The OSA Publishing Enterprise: Some Facts, Figures, and Economics

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  1. The OSA Publishing Enterprise:Some Facts, Figures, and Economics Ted Bergstrom

  2. Good News • In 2008 OSA published 6 of the 12 top optics journals as measured either by citations or eigenfactor. • Total subscriptions to OSA journals have increased since 2004. • Net Revenue has increased by 21%, compared to CPI increase of 14% since 2004. • Number of pages published more than doubled. • Growth comes from open access, Optics Express. Pages in traditional journals unchanged.

  3. More Good News • Optics Express, the open access journal founded in 1997 has been a smashing success. • In 2008, OE supplies 59% of OSA pages, 31% of OSA citations, and 25% of OSA profits.

  4. Rankings of Optics Journals

  5. Primer on Bibliometrics • Impact factor vs Citation Counts • Impact factor of journal is average number of citations per article in first 3 years. • Measure of average influence of articles • May be appropriate for guessing future importance of an article without bothering to read it. Highly unreliable predictor of that. • Citation count is number of times during given year that most recent 5 years’ volumes are cited. • A more reasonable measure of usefulness of a journal to a library.

  6. Eigenfactor and Article Influence • Eigenfactor is a refinement of citation counts. • Citations from more frequently cited journals count for more. • Calculated recursively, similar idea to Google PageRank. • Fictitious researcher Markov process Goes to library, picks a journal at random. Chooses a citation at random, goes to that journal, continues forever. Fraction of time he spends at a journal is that journal’s eigenfactor.

  7. Article influence factor • A journal’s A.I.F. is proportional to its eigenfactor divided by the number of articles published per year in this journal. • A.I.F. is to eigenfactor as impact factor is to citation counts.

  8. Relative Bang Per Cite(ratio of relative eigenfactor to relative citation count)

  9. Subscription Trends for 4 Main OSA Journals and InfoBase

  10. Subscriptions, Revenue and Downloads

  11. Country by Country

  12. Subs at U.S. Academic Institutions

  13. Value Comparison with Elsevier

  14. What about profits? • OSA subscription journals cost about 1/3 as much per page as Elsevier’s optics-related journals. • How do their profit rates compare? • OSA ‘s ratio of profits to sales is about 40% • Elsevier reports profits to sales ratio of 33% • Rent Dissipation Theory • Much of monopoly “profit” gets spent on protecting monopoly. Lobbyists, Lawyers, etc. • Some goes to overpaid executives • Some is hidden in less profitable parts of enterprise.

  15. Do OSA journals outsell Elsevier in the “marginal” part of the market? • We looked at a random sample of 17 Doctoral II universities. • Elsevier optics journals averaged 12 subscriptions from this group. • Optics Letters and Applied Optics averaged 10 • Even though OL an AO cost less than 1/3 as much per page or cite. • Elsevier sells huge multi-disciplinary bundles and price discriminates on historic sales. • OSA probably could do better in this market with targeted pricing.

  16. A Tougher Standard

  17. How much should OSA pubs subsidize other society activities? • OSA made profit of almost $5 million on $11 million revenue—45%. • Not for me to answer, but for you to consider • You might want to ask whether attendance at conferences is more price elastic than subscriptions to pubs. Hence need subsidization. • Or is it just a matter of getting money from university budgets that would otherwise go elsewhere.

  18. Optics Express in 2008 • Author charges: • $1,585 for 7-15 pages • $925 for 1-6 pages • About 2,300 articles published • Average revenue per paper $1,252 • Average cost per paper: $570

  19. Optics Express Costs/Article and Scale

  20. Open Access Author Charges

  21. Growth of OSA offerings New in 2009 : Advances in Optics and Photonics Building on Success: Three New Open Access Journals Planned: with “Express” branding

  22. Production Costs of OSA Journals

  23. OhioLink: A Natural Experiment • How can we tell how much use current non-subscribers would make of InfoBase if they had it? • Selection bias: We can only observe use by current subscribers, but these are the places that have most interest in optics (even controlling for size and Carnegie class). • OhioLInk provides some evidence.

  24. The data • Almost every university and community college in Ohio participates in OhioLInk. • Since 2005, all OhioLink members have had access to InfoBase. • In 2002, there was no OhioLink contract with OSA. • We have data on downloads from OSA journals by each OhioLink participant.

  25. Downloads in 08-09 by OhioLink Institutions

  26. Downloads from Ohio in 08-09 • 98% of downloads are from universities that subscribed to all 4 major OSA journals in 2002 • Total of 444 downloads from institutions that had no OSA subscriptions in 2002 (about 1%) • 228 downloads from community colleges • Conclusion? • Not much extra usage from masters and bachelors institutions • Some usage from community colleges • No evidence about Carnegie II

  27. Pricing Strategies Issues to Consider • Objectives • Maintain revenue • Increase Exposure • Price Discrimination • Tiered Pricing • Consortial Deals • Pricing based on historical subscriptions • Bundling • Rationalize Revenue Sharing • Rationalize and Simplify Print Pricing

  28. Had Enough? • OK, I’m Done

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