Scholarly Societies and the Newspaper Problem

Abstract

This paper looks at the current economic model of large scholarly societies. This model relies on significant surpluses from publishing operations to fund other activities of the societies. It is argued that this economic model lacks transparency as colleges and universities supply a subsidy to the societies by overpaying for journals and indexes and that they are generally not aware that this is happening. If is further argued that as was the case with newspapers a decade ago, scholarly societies will need to reinvent their economic model. The driving force is likely to be the coming pressure to adopt an Open Access model. Plan S is the current manifestation of this pressure.