Economic Cost Models of Scientific Scholarly Journals

This paper summarizes costs of publishing scientific scholarly journals. Activities are described for five publishing components: article processing (e.g., manuscript processing, editing , composition, etc.), non-article processing (i.e. similar activities related to covers, tables-of-content, letters, book reviews, etc.), reproduction (e.g., printing, collating, binding, etc.), distribution (e.g., wrapping, labeling, sorting, mailing, subscription maintenance, etc.), and support (e.g., marketing, administration, finance, etc.). A model is derived for each of these components consisting of cost parameters (e.g., number of issues, pages, subscriptions, etc.) and cost elements (e.g., cost per page of editing, set-up cost per issue, postage cost per issue copy mailed, etc.). Total costs of a "typical" journal are presented where cost parameters are estimated from a sample of scientific scholarly journals and cost elements derived from estimates reported in the literature. Costs of electronic publications are also derived.