Sharing Reprint Revenues With Authors

In 2005, we made a policy decision to share reprint revenues with the authors. We sold the reprint rights of a paper to a German firm and shared 10% of the total amount received. A cheque for Rs 12 000 was given to the authors with a request to use the sum for research and academic purposes.

I would like to know whether any other journal shares their revenue with the authors and if so what is their experience so far?

(IJP is owned by the Indian Pharmacological Society and is a not-for-profit journal.)

R Raveendran
Chief Editor, Indian Journal of Pharmacology (JIPMER) (www.jipmer.edu)

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Very interesting! That idea hadn't even occurred to me. We charge authors and others who order reprints from the poorer countries only what the printer charges, and in most cases subsidize the cost. For people who order reprints in the US, we make a VERY small profit—maybe 5%—and therefore not worth the accounting staff to keep track of splitting that amount.

Kimberly Taylor
Publications Director, Journal of the National Medical Association

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I think perhaps what revenue might be shared is that from commercial reprints or rights sold to book publishers, etc, rather than income from reprints purchased by individuals for, say, educational purposes. For example, if a book publisher wants to reprint an article our journal has published and we charge them a fee for it, should part of that fee go to the author of the original article?

My husband works for a small humanities journal, and they give a portion of such revenue to their authors. We don't, and I sometimes wonder if we should, although it would be a small sum.

Lisa Dittrich
Managing Editor, Academic Medicine

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I support Kimberly's response. Most times, what publishers charge for reprints only cover the cost of production and postage, with little or none left over. If there is any, it is insignificant. The reason is that if you are thinking of making a profit from reprints to the extent that you have enough to share with the authors, the cost would have been too much and the person ordering the reprint may reconsider his/her decision. Article reprints are meant to further disseminate an article to specific persons or organisations who need them but may not have access to the whole issue of the journal, or to those who need copies of a particular article for specific purposes.

You may only make some profit if another publisher is reprinting the article and paying you for that purpose. In that case you incur no costs.

WJames Falaiye
Science Writer/Editor, International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA)

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Another point that I factored regarding charges for reprints was our impact factor. Our impact factor was pretty low; therefore, I want to encourage the distribution of reprints—so I charge the least possible amount for them. The hope is that the more affordable the reprints are, the more likely they are to be bought in greater quantities and distributed. With the wider distribution, more people will come to know the journal (97 years old) and perhaps go to it as a source either for publication or research. Our impact factor went from .4 to 1 since I have been here (4.25 years)—so we're working on it.

Kimberly Taylor

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