Sometimes I want to read a paper, but only subscribing members can have access. They want me to pay a fee in the range of about $30 for one-time access to the PDF file. But I can always go down to the library and read it for free. $30 seems like it would exceed by $20 the cost of simply purchasing that issue of the journal, and all I want is 1 article.

Then I find that many other papers are free to read over the internet. Why are some free, and some not?

At $30, do they make ANY sales? If it were $5, I'd be tempted to save myself a walk to the library. Any professional is likely to have a subscription through his or her institution. Any non-professional with a passive interest isn't going going to pay $30. (at least I haven't). At $30, whose their target market?

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www.gravitysimulator.com

Even worse, why do some journals charge per page fees to publish work?

Why not? A buck's to be had.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

Yeah, I was going to say also, editors need to pay bills just like everybody else. They don't work for free.

The question of individual pricing choices is complicated. Different journals do it different ways.

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As above, so below

Sssh---don't tell Fraser!

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Personally, I think the entire system of publishing papers, embargos etc (especially with the hideously over zealous Science magazine) is rotten to the core. I don't know how it should work, but these things should be free to all. Thankfully, at least one effort is being made in that regard (http://marsjournal.org/) but more should follow.

Doug

People don't seem to realize how much publishing costs. As an example, I have an electronic subscription to Journal of Geophysical Research (space), which costs for a personal subscription about $160 per year (12 volumes) but that is only a very small portion of what the real costs are. An institute subscription is at least tenfold this price.

It is not just taking the text and print it. There are lots of things to be done, not in the least contacting and keeping trace of (possible) referees for all the papers.

Although, there is a lot wrong with the publishing business, e.g. what djellison wrote (which actually also holds for Nature), I think that the prices are only relatively high, when considering all the facts.

Naturally, I would never buy a single paper, I ask colleagues to get them for me, if we don't have the journal in our library.

I think that most "professionals" here on BAUT would be willing to make papers available now and then. I know I have, mostly in the ATM forum, but most of the ATMers don't seem to want it in the end.

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Optimism does not change the laws of physics. (T'Pol)
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. (Dao De Jing 27)
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Martin ( http://www.geocities.com/DrMartinV )

Bear in mind that many journals do not accept advertisements, especially those published by scientific societies. The Physical Review and Physical Review Letters are examples of this. They are published by the American Physical Society in several volumes each month. An entire month's worth of the set (Phys Rev A, B15, B30, C, D15, D30, E and PRL) would easily make a two foot stack on your desk. PR and PRL do not accept ads, so the production costs have to come from somewhere.

Of course, all of PR and PRL are currently available on line as well as in print. The on-line subscriptions are substantially less than the dead tree version. My PRL subscription comes to about $30 in addition to my APS dues and is well worth it.

That being said, there are some journals that try to run a profit. APS just concluded a nasty lawsuit with one of them (World Scientific's journals I believe) over a study they did on the influence (based on citations) of various journals against their cost. World Scientific took exception and sued. APS won, but it took a while.

APS and AIP do have a lot of free on-line content. And I believe they are making some articles in PRL available for free. The journal world is still making the transition to the electronic age, so some teething pains are to be expected.

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"I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind." - William Thompson, 1st Baron Lord Kelvin

"If it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic!" - Tweedledee

This isn't right. This isn't even wrong. - Wolfgang Pauli

if they were free for all, there would be an awful lot less published! There's a reason publishers go into business....

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Todd (Bowie, MD, US, North America, Earth, Sol System, Vega region, Local Bubble, Orion arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Local Group, Virgo A Cluster, Virgo supercluster, the universe in which spock is clean shaven)

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

personal page: http://blog.astrosketches.info

I'm not sure anyone's addressed the main point of the OP - why does it cost $30 for a single download when buying a print version of the entire issue is much less? At least, I think that was the main point. People seem to have sidetracked to the debate of whether the subscription price is justified.

I don't know the answer.

The issue seems to be a journal that costs $10 per issue. Which one is that?

As hhEb09'1 said, very few journals that I know of are sold for $10 an issue, for a single issue or are even sold as single issues (and heck, what newsstand sells Journal of Solid State Chemistry?).

But $10 an issue for a monthly, works out to $120 per year, which is probably at the lower end of the range for annual subscriptions. So they are giving an advantage to people who buy in bulk; in other words, subscribe to the journal. Journals that are published by professional societies, such as The American Chemical Society, also usually give discounts to members of those societies, a strong incentive to become a member.

So, are the publishers and societies who issue these journals trying to subsidize their costs by "taking advantage" of the on-line, single article user - probably. But specialty, low volume journals will never be able to compete on cost to mass market magazines, because of the volumes involved and the fixed costs (the same happens with book publishing) and someone has to pay the costs.

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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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

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?

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.

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www.gravitysimulator.com

I don't know, but I suspect that it is professionals that are paying $30/article. The company I work for subscribes to maybe half a dozen journals at most that are related to our business. But, there can be several dozen more that have occassional articles of interest. And more often that not, an article I might suddenly be interested in (new project for example) might be several or many years old.

So, unless the article happens to be in a journal we have, and we kept it, the company will use that service and go purchase the article. I don't care, the company pays for it. And it is probably cheaper for the company than saving years and years of multiple journals on the chance that someone will need some article. Plus, since I work in R&D, it gets written off as a research expense.

Pre-internet days, there were companies out there that would do the exact same thing for you - find a University that had the journal, pay them to make a copy, and mail the copy to you. And if I remember correctly, the charge was about $25 or $30 per article. So, in constant dollars, it actually is cheaper now.

Now, my current employer is relatively well off. I used to work for a small company. If I wanted an article, I went to the library and copied it. Every six months or so I would expense $25 or $50 in quarters and make an expedition of stuff I was interested in.

One last thing - part of the fee you pay goes to cover the copyright fee (I don't know how much that is).

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)