How Much Does Scholarly Publishing Cost?

The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) has a very good issue out now on publishing economics, which I recommend to everyone. (The issue is labelled “Volume 19, No. 1: Economics of Publishing,” a useful atavism.) There are a number of good articles here, including the very well-written introduction by the editor, Maria Bonn.  I looked at a couple of the articles with special interest because, well, I had an interest: the piece by Paul Courant and Terri Geitgey on free riders in monograph publishing draws in part on data developed by Karen Barch and myself on behalf of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (Karen and I expect to publish a report on that data on the Scholarly Kitchen by the end of the year), and I was an early reader of Nancy Maron’s piece. Taken as a collection, though, all the pieces here make an assumption about what publishing is, one that is not aligned with what publishers actually do.