Quote:
Originally Posted by hhEb09'1
The issue seems to be a journal that costs $10 per issue. Which one is that?
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They just have the size shape and feel of a $10 magazine. That's what I was going on. But Googling shows me that $200 will get me 51 issues of Nature, which is a little less than $4 per issue. The article in particular I was referring to is in "Planetary and Space Science", which is a bit pricier. $400 gets you 15 issues. That's about $27 an issue. And browsing the contents online, it seems each issue contains about 10-15 articles. So paying $31.50 for a single article seems excessive.
I see the Astrophysical Journal charges only $9 for a single article. They want $2050 a year, for what seems like about 36 issues (1 every 10 days). But each issue contains about 50 articles, (based on glancing through two of them.) That means a subscriber is paying only about $1 per article. Now I realize that french fries cost more when you buy them individually, rather than as part of the Big Mac meal, but the descrepancy between a subscriber's price and a non-subscriber's price seems extreme to the point where I wonder if they make any single-article sales.
Yes, I realize publishers need to make money. It wasn't the point of my OP to wonder why they charge. Rather, why they charge as much as they charge, and whether they make any sales at $30 an article? Professionals are likely to have subscriptions at their institutions. So that leaves people like me and my fellow BAUTers. I've never paid it. Has anybody here ever paid $30 to read a single article? That's the main thing I'm wondering in my OP: not why do publishers need to make money, rather, who's their target market and do they make any sales?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Swift
By the way, if you don't want to shell out the $30, go visit the nearest University, find the article, and make a copy (bring change for the copying machine).
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Which is exactly what I do. (But coins are so olf-fashioned
). I read it on their computer and e-mail a copy to myself. I'm lucky. I live a 10 minute walk from a University Library. So I'll never pay $30. But even if I was a 1 hour bus ride away, I still wouldn't pay it. It's just too much money for for me, a person who doesn't have a professional interest in the article, to pay. And if I had a professional interest, I'd likely have a subscription through my institution.