JosephKK wrote:
On Sat, 29 Nov 2008 16:46:13 -0800 (PST), wrote:
The cost of actually printing the journals is significant, and has to
come from somewhere. They're not exactly huge circulation, and mostly
have no advertising, but are printed on high quality stock with good
quality typesetting.
The physical printing costs are actually minimal, distribution costs
more now.
Say it costs about $0.05/page for offset printing on glossy stock (no
idea if that's right, but it's probably within a factor of 10). A 100
page journal is then $5 in raw production costs, per unit. (and we'll
assuming binding, etc. is included)
But you have to add typography and editing and composition. I'd find it
hard to believe that a complete journal could be set up in less than 100
work hours. So, about $10K.
If the circulation of the journal is 200 copies, then that's another
$10K in repro costs. You're up to $10/issue, before you've distributed
it, maintained the subscriber list, etc. These things all cost money
(been there, provided the service, made a living from it, barely).
Check out what the "print to order" publishers charge. (e.g. Lulu.com)
(100 page, paperback perfect bound is about $5.30, exclusive of shipping)
]
This statement was in regard to the high costs of obtaining copies
from the IEEE without
having to pay the high costs of belonging .
The cost to get a single copy is quite high compared to the cost to
get access to thousands by being a member (check out those CCC prices
at the bottom of the first page.. they're fairly pricey.. a dozen
papers a year and you've just paid for your membership and access to
Xplore)
Just a few years ago i could get physical reprints of articles from
most journals for about $3 each, now electronic reprints cost $20 or
more? I think we all can figure out where the money is going.
I think you'd have to go back quite a ways in time to get to $3/article.
Grabbing a few things on my desk, a 2001 IEEE Proceedings article runs
you $10. A paper in a 2004 Trans Antennas and Prop is $20. A 1982
Proceedings of IEEE paper runs $0.75. Jim Breakall's paper on HF
propagation modeling over mountains in 1994 IEEE Trans A&P is $4.00
Of course, those are just the costs if you photocopy it yourself and
submit the fee to the copyright clearance center.
And, a lot of times, the author of the paper will send you a copy, if
you write and ask. (That's actually one of the fun parts about
publishing.. Getting those post cards from obscure places in the world
10 years later: "Meine geehrte Kollege, bitte schicken Sie mir ....")
Granted if the author is dead or unreachable, that's a challenge.
Funny thing about "work for hire", the hiring entity is the one with
any legal rights here in the US. But the NIH for some strange reason
does not assert its rights.
One would have to look at the specific contracts/grant language, but
I'll bet they require dissemination in something like PubMed these days.
The days of the Principal Investigator keeping their data secret for
decades while they dribble out a paper a year, are dying, if not dead,
at least for publicly funded work.
On NASA missions, there's typically a clause that requires dissemination
of the raw data from an instrument within 6 months, and you're required
to have budgeted for that dissemination in your proposal.
The IEEE does not publish work for hire
generally, but charges for submissions.
Of course the IEEE publishes work for hire. If you work for Boeing,
write a paper, and get it published, Boeing owns the copyright (as work
for hire), and executes a license to IEEE to use it. And they don't
always charge for submissions. My very first published paper (wasn't
with IEEE, as it happens) had the page fees waived, because I was in
high school at the time.