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Pricing of scientific publications: A commercial publisher’s point of view. (English) Zbl 0911.00003

This article describes a rather personal opinion contributing to the current discussion on journal prices in mathematics, though it has to be admitted that the author has taken into account a broad background of other publications and initiatives concerning these problems. He discusses a lot of factors that play a role in pricing in the commercial publishing business without aiming to hide this enterprise behind terms like “scientific publishing”. His main statements are that profit is the reward for the investment that makes innovation and risk-taking possible and that profit is a relatively small contributor to the price spiral. Having been for almost 40 years in leading positions at commercial publishers, the author can rely on a profound professional background for his statements.
Though this will not be the place to enter a dispute concerning the author’s arguments, some short general comment on the paper might be in order. For a mathematician, who is confronted with the problem that library holdings of journals will have to be reduced more and more and publication facilities will go down as far as the traditional framework will be concerned, many of the author’s statements will remain incomprehensible. For those who are involved in the business of mathematics publications, a lot of these statements will remain without evidence or even contradict what they know about the current conditions in that business. Hence, though the author’s point of view explicitly is declared as a commercial one, there remains the same dissatisfaction for readers from the scientific side like it originates from the publishers’ statements at these many panels, where the pricing problem is discussed: No understandable explanation is given why several mathematical journals are asking for such high subscription rates unless we just accept that maximizing profit will be the only argument. Nevertheless, the article should be read by those interested in the subject.

MSC:

00A99 General and miscellaneous specific topics
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