[GOAL] GOAL Digest, Vol 58, Issue 2

[Danny Kingsley]

Thanks Emily,

There has been a posting on Scholarly Kitchen about it with Kent 
Anderson's calculations - you may agree or wish to answer the call.

Danny


  Annual Reports --- What Do They Actually Tell Us?

POSTED BYKENT ANDERSON 
<https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/author/scholarlykitchen/>?AUG 29, 2016
  - 
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/08/29/annual-reports-what-do-they-actually-tell-us/

Kent states:

Unfortunately,/eLife's/report is itself rather opaque.

Like some of its ilk, the report provides some insights into the 
organization's finances, but obscures many things, using questionable 
math to achieve certain ratios and make certain claims. It also leaves 
out many costs in order to generate a misleading cost-per-article 
calculation.

Costs that are left out of the equation includethe approximately 2,400 
square feet of office space 
<http://www.movehut.co.uk/property/364539-24-hills-road-cambridge/>, 
which seems to rent for about US$40 (furnished) per square foot, giving 
us an approximate cost of US$96,000 annually, or roughly another $100 
per article. Legal fees, human resources, benefits, and other corporate 
overheads may or may not be captured, but experience suggests they have 
been left out, which would be another approximately 20-30% premium on 
all the fixed costs, which calculates out to another US$780,000 on the 
high side, or US$780 per article.

There is a lot of text expended rationalizing the amount of 
money/eLife/spends paying its editors. But little transparency is given, 
with only a single number for editorial salaries as a whole provided. 
Unlike in the IRS 990, no specific salaries are given. We can find 
recent ones elsewhere, fortunately.

The math on publishing costs in the/eLife/annual report is questionable, 
with some capital expenditures held out as non-publishing expenses 
despite their clear relevance to a long-term technology publishing plan. 
In fact, this bit of financial contortion removes 22% of their 
expenditures, which suppresses their per-article charge calculations by 
a similar amount. For example, the calculations without the capital 
expenditure for 2015 come out to about US$4,700 per article. But, with 
the capital expenditure factored back into the overall expenses, the 
per-article publishing cost rises to US$5,500.

Factoring in the work space, overheads, and capital expenditures, and 
the/eLife/cost-per-article goes from US$4,700 to roughly US$6,380. And 
we're still not sure that we've seen all their expenses. This is 
approximately 27% more than Patterson states.



On 06/09/2016 12:00, goal-request at eprints.org wrote:
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> Today's Topics:
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>     1. Inside eLife: What it costs to publish (Emily Packer)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2016 15:43:13 +0100
> From: Emily Packer <e.packer at elifesciences.org>
> Subject: [GOAL] Inside eLife: What it costs to publish
> To: goal at eprints.org
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAErc9s+b9uBBjRumwk1AD24hrE3o4ET4efnuXvtt6ZE-Be5r5g at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> [Apologies for cross-posting]
>
> Hi all,
>
> Of interest, eLife has published its 2015 annual report, detailing
> our costs of publishing versus those of our technology innovation and
> development.
>
>
>
> Every year since 2012, eLife has published an annual report on activities
> along with our US Form 990 (required for our type of non-profit
> organisation) and our audited financial accounts. This year, we present a
> deeper view of our 2015 financials, covering publishing and non-publishing
> expenses.
>
>
>
> As part of our ambition to change how science publishing works, especially
> among highly selective journals, we hope that being transparent about
> our costs will help set a future course for research communication that is
> efficient and sustainable.
>
>
>
> eLife's Executive Director, Mark Patterson, and Head of External Relations,
> Jennifer McLennan, have written a blog post that provides further
> information about our costs (https://elifesciences.org/eli
> fe-news/inside-elife-what-it-costs-publish) and the Times Higher Education
> featured a news piece: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/elife-
> reveals-publication-costs-spark-debate-journal-prices.
>
>
> Our 2015 annual report is also available to view here:
> https://2015.elifesciences.org.
>
>
> Please let me know if you would like any further information.
>
>
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
> Emily
>
>

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