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I'm curious what the business expenses of a digital publisher like Elsevier look like. Peer review is not their purview, right? And I don't believe they pay the

by tux3 5y ago

I'm curious what the business expenses of a digital publisher like Elsevier look like. Peer review is not their purview, right? And I don't believe they pay the original authors a portion of each sale. Or that they need much of an advertising budget. What's the cost structure look like for a company like this one? With all due cynicism, has their been public research on the sort of clever accounting tricks a company with Elsevier's business model must surely be using to keep their profit margin as low as 35% ..?

suprfsat 5y ago
Lobbying against open access, suing SciHub, threatening authors for self-publishing, yachts,
jpeloquin 5y ago
> I'm curious what the business expenses of a digital publisher like Elsevier look like. Me too. Their investor relations report [0] is the best source I know of, but it's pretty vague. I only see breakdowns of revenue, no details regarding operating costs. PLOS One is transparent regarding their costs though [1]: - 46% publishing, editorial - 18% publishing, production - 15% publishing, technology - 16% general & admin - 5% publication fee rebates [0] https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/results/results-presentations/2020-results-presentation.pdf https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/re... [1] https://plos.org/financial-overview/ https://plos.org/financial-overview/