[Lingtyp] ALT Newsletter 61

[Sebastian Nordhoff]

Dear Jeff,
thanks for this additional information, very helpful!

> (ALT does not have access to any details on De Gruyter revenue from Linguistic Typology, by the way.)

how can the ALT members reach an informed decision about a financial 
issue when left in the dark about the numbers?

In absence of clear statements (which de Gruyter does have, but 
apparently does not wish to disclose), we can resort to 
back-of-the-envelope calculations

1) Currently, there are around 500s members in ALT who would pay 65 EUR 
for online only subscription. 10 EUR of this go to ALT, the rest goes to 
the publisher. That gives us roughly 500 * 50 = 25,000 EUR receipts for 
de Gruyter.

2) To this, we can add the institutional subscriptions. There are 115 
institutions which support Language Science Press. These probably also 
share an interest in LT. So, let's take 100 as a sensible figure. 
Institutional subscription to LT is 280 EUR per year. Through bundles, 
the price goes down; but on the other hand, bundles also bring in new 
institutions which would not have subscribed otherwise. So, that's about 
another 25,000 EUR of receipts for de Gruyter.

Taken together, this makes 50,000 EUR of revenue LT generates for de 
Gruyter, or slightly over 3,000 EUR the scientific community at large is 
currently paying per article in LT. (By comparison, Glossa runs on £450 
per article)

Obviously, there is a lot of uncertainty in this calculation. De Gruyter 
can remove this uncertainty by actually disclosing the number of 
individual and institutional subscriptions.

Best wishes
Sebastian