4 ms·

All I hear from academic publishers is "publishing costs money", but that's not the point, and they know it. The point is exactly threefold, and much simpler t

All I hear from academic publishers is "publishing costs money", but that's not the point, and they know it. The point is exactly threefold, and much simpler than even the simplest article they review: 1. It costs dramatically less to publish it used to. 2. Editors routinely offload expensive tasks to those submitting, i.e.: formatting figures and text, converting to publication-quality file formats, and in some cases even layout, to the point where we're not even sure what it is they do anymore. 3. Most research is publicly funded. It seems ethically wrong for there to be paywalls, especially considering the hefty price-tag associated with submitting an article in the first place. Editors: we're academics, not idiots. Please respond to our actual goddamn points.

ISL 11y ago
Editing, in the journal sense of the word (finding good referees, hounding them to get reports back, responding to authors, evaluating revisions, etc.) takes a lot of work and time. I wouldn't be willing to do an editor's job for free (unless underwritten by another employer, as I am for peer review), and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do so either. Publishing costs are far, far lower than they used to be, but good proofreading and style-guide checking still takes time too.
- x1798DE 11y ago
  Maybe it's because I'm a native English speaker with strong writing skills, but I don't think any actual editing of the text has taken place on the journal's side on any paper I've ever been on. Usually the co-authors do this in several rounds before submission.
  - ISL 11y ago
    It's common for major physics journals to copy-edit before publication. The APS journals and the Review of Scientific Instruments both do it. Sometimes they'll catch a subtle error, sometimes they make edits to bring the document into compliance with their own style guide, and occasionally they'll introduce an error. On balance, they make the publication much stronger and more consistent. I've gotten nice PDFs that highlight the diffs and any questions/concerns they may have.
    - gradstudent 11y ago
      This is a job nobody asked for but everybody has to pay for. As an author I am very careful about what I say in my papers and how I say it. If something sounds stilted or odd, there's probably a reason. Words mean things and subtle changes can affect their interpretation. For this reason I do not like being edited by a non expert. If I feel my work needs such attention, I'll ask for it.
  - jofer 11y ago
    It depends on the journal, but usually there will be subtle edits. In my experience, the edits usually make the article less readable, but they are common for major journals, at least in my field. One of the major journals in my field has a ban on sentences that start with adverbs. I'll admit my writing often uses adverbs it shouldn't but the journal will silently turn sentences like: > Typically, data are ... into > It is typical for data to be ... instead of rewriting the sentence to avoid starting with "typically" in a more readable way. At any rate, edits are pretty common, but they're usually to match internal style guidelines, as opposed to editing for readability/content/etc. As a counter-example, though, I have had one case where a typesetter noticed that I had an incorrect paper in the reference list purely from the actual scientific context in which I was referencing it. It was a really nice catch, and interestingly, it implies that the person doing the typesetting has a _very_ deep background in the field and a very broad knowledge of the relevant literature. It's not something that could have been guessed from the titles of the articles I was referencing without knowing the subject matter intimately.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >Publishing costs are far, far lower than they used to be, but good proofreading and style-guide checking still takes time too. Absolutely, 100% agreed. Perhaps this was lost in my confrontational tone, but I agree that academic journals should be paid something. I'm mostly opposed to paywalls, followed by the amount we're paying. Where I partially disagree is in the fact that the editing tasks you describe are increasingly offloaded to the submitter.
- padraic7a 11y ago
  But journal editors aren't usually paid by journals. Typically they are full time academics paid by the University, editing the journal is only part of what they do. They might or might not receive some sort of cash amount but it won't provide a sustainable income, or even a minimum wage and is more an honorarium.
dougmccune 11y ago
I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. Traditional academic publishers might have to print less paper now than they used to (although even that is questionable) but they aren't able to stop printing paper copies of journals. We cannot switch straight over to electronic only for all our journals. Our customers (mostly university libraries) still demand print, as much as we'd like that to not be the case. So today traditional publishers are stuck in a tough spot, we either have to take on the full cost of both digital distribution (and no, this is not free or even super cheap) while also continuing with the cost of paper distribution. Or we could say across the board that we're done with paper and try to deal with the hoards of angry customers we'd get. It's similar to a large old software system with lots of customers. Ripping out a feature you've offered forever comes with massive customer disapproval, even if it's the logical thing to do for the product. So in that regard it's easier for the small new entrant to be nimble and not have to deal with maintaining the legacy stuff.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. I must insist that this is missing the point. On some level, you seem to (inadvertently, perhaps?) acknowledge this since you qualified your argument with "subscription academic journals". I would argue that this is an outdated business model, due to the fact that publication costs per se have dramatically dropped. Of course, it costs more to run an outdated business! Join the PLoS team, or die, I say! (Respectfully, of course!) To be less dramatic, my argument is essentially this: stop offering subscription-based services. It doesn't work for you for the same reason it doesn't work for the New York Times, and you're suffering the same consequences.
  - dougmccune 11y ago
    That's certainly a valid viewpoint, that there simply shouldn't be anything other than electronic only journals. Or to take it further (which I acknowledge isn't exactly what you said) that there shouldn't even be journals that attempt to bestow prestige at all (ie that should be a process of post publication of some sort). But it's also about the realistic challenges of running a sustainable business in academia. PLoS figured out a formula that works for a portion of the market with PLoS One. Note that that doesn't really work for the humanities and social sciences because the funding situation is so different. So then you have Open Library of Humanities, which is surviving currently on grant money with the hopes that they can get universities to fund their journals (not all that different than subscriptions to be honest, just that they are a nonprofit). But it's entirely unclear if that's going to be sustainable. So even a brand new state of the art low cost journal needs to find funding somewhere. How that works in STEM might make sense (APCs coming from research funding) but how it works outside of that is entirely undefined.
capnrefsmmat 11y ago
I think point #2 is only true for LaTeX-heavy fields like math, physics, and statistics. It's certainly not true for biology, medicine, psychology, or other fields where Word is king. In biology and medicine, NIH open-access requirements mean most articles are converted to XML (http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/). Articles are submitted in Word files, edited and converted to XML via some proprietary complicated toolchain, typeset to PDF with a big proprietary system like Arbortext, and shipped off to PubMed for archiving. Figures are usually TIFFs or PDFs converted to whatever formats are needed for the web or print. I don't know how the conversion process works, but I suspect that turning arbitrary Word files into semantic XML with accurate bibliographic cross-referencing metadata and high-quality tables and figures requires a lot of manual work. You have to deal with complicated tables, weird Word formatting, and whatever weird styling the authors think is a good idea. The bibliography has to be annotated with DOIs and converted to a standard format. LaTeX and BibTeX, or some other structured markup language, are undoubtedly much easier to deal with and much easier to automate. I think Michael Eisen of PLOS has commented on the situation and said they're actively working on rebuilding their publishing toolchain to automate more of the process, since it requires hours of work for every paper.
- pgtan 11y ago
  Automatic typography isn't! Let's suppose for example, there is $P_A$ in the text. According to the rules of math typesetting if A stays for description like "Alice", it should be set in the current math roman font i.e. $P_\text{A}$. So $P_A$ looks suspicious, what shall the typesetter do? 1. ignore everything and this way leave the typographic responsibility to the author; 2. set it correctly, because she is one of those underpaid TeX-typesetter, who can read out of the text, what A stands for; 3. send back a question to the author for clarifying. And this is just a simple example. The before/after gap betweeen author typoscripts an proper typesetted books is enormous. Sadly, the job of the scientific typesetter is not valued this days any more.
  - gradstudent 11y ago
    The job of the scientific typesetter should not exist. Give me your reviews and your latex template (and only your latex template) and get out of the way.

ISL 11y ago

Editing, in the journal sense of the word (finding good referees, hounding them to get reports back, responding to authors, evaluating revisions, etc.) takes a lot of work and time. I wouldn't be willing to do an editor's job for free (unless underwritten by another employer, as I am for peer review), and I wouldn't expect anyone else to do so either. Publishing costs are far, far lower than they used to be, but good proofreading and style-guide checking still takes time too.

x1798DE 11y ago
Maybe it's because I'm a native English speaker with strong writing skills, but I don't think any actual editing of the text has taken place on the journal's side on any paper I've ever been on. Usually the co-authors do this in several rounds before submission.
- ISL 11y ago
  It's common for major physics journals to copy-edit before publication. The APS journals and the Review of Scientific Instruments both do it. Sometimes they'll catch a subtle error, sometimes they make edits to bring the document into compliance with their own style guide, and occasionally they'll introduce an error. On balance, they make the publication much stronger and more consistent. I've gotten nice PDFs that highlight the diffs and any questions/concerns they may have.
  - gradstudent 11y ago
    This is a job nobody asked for but everybody has to pay for. As an author I am very careful about what I say in my papers and how I say it. If something sounds stilted or odd, there's probably a reason. Words mean things and subtle changes can affect their interpretation. For this reason I do not like being edited by a non expert. If I feel my work needs such attention, I'll ask for it.
- jofer 11y ago
  It depends on the journal, but usually there will be subtle edits. In my experience, the edits usually make the article less readable, but they are common for major journals, at least in my field. One of the major journals in my field has a ban on sentences that start with adverbs. I'll admit my writing often uses adverbs it shouldn't but the journal will silently turn sentences like: > Typically, data are ... into > It is typical for data to be ... instead of rewriting the sentence to avoid starting with "typically" in a more readable way. At any rate, edits are pretty common, but they're usually to match internal style guidelines, as opposed to editing for readability/content/etc. As a counter-example, though, I have had one case where a typesetter noticed that I had an incorrect paper in the reference list purely from the actual scientific context in which I was referencing it. It was a really nice catch, and interestingly, it implies that the person doing the typesetting has a _very_ deep background in the field and a very broad knowledge of the relevant literature. It's not something that could have been guessed from the titles of the articles I was referencing without knowing the subject matter intimately.
omginternets 11y ago
>Publishing costs are far, far lower than they used to be, but good proofreading and style-guide checking still takes time too. Absolutely, 100% agreed. Perhaps this was lost in my confrontational tone, but I agree that academic journals should be paid something. I'm mostly opposed to paywalls, followed by the amount we're paying. Where I partially disagree is in the fact that the editing tasks you describe are increasingly offloaded to the submitter.
padraic7a 11y ago
But journal editors aren't usually paid by journals. Typically they are full time academics paid by the University, editing the journal is only part of what they do. They might or might not receive some sort of cash amount but it won't provide a sustainable income, or even a minimum wage and is more an honorarium.

dougmccune 11y ago

I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. Traditional academic publishers might have to print less paper now than they used to (although even that is questionable) but they aren't able to stop printing paper copies of journals. We cannot switch straight over to electronic only for all our journals. Our customers (mostly university libraries) still demand print, as much as we'd like that to not be the case. So today traditional publishers are stuck in a tough spot, we either have to take on the full cost of both digital distribution (and no, this is not free or even super cheap) while also continuing with the cost of paper distribution. Or we could say across the board that we're done with paper and try to deal with the hoards of angry customers we'd get. It's similar to a large old software system with lots of customers. Ripping out a feature you've offered forever comes with massive customer disapproval, even if it's the logical thing to do for the product. So in that regard it's easier for the small new entrant to be nimble and not have to deal with maintaining the legacy stuff.

omginternets 11y ago
>I know it's hard to believe, but #1 is false for a lot of subscription academic journals. I must insist that this is missing the point. On some level, you seem to (inadvertently, perhaps?) acknowledge this since you qualified your argument with "subscription academic journals". I would argue that this is an outdated business model, due to the fact that publication costs per se have dramatically dropped. Of course, it costs more to run an outdated business! Join the PLoS team, or die, I say! (Respectfully, of course!) To be less dramatic, my argument is essentially this: stop offering subscription-based services. It doesn't work for you for the same reason it doesn't work for the New York Times, and you're suffering the same consequences.
- dougmccune 11y ago
  That's certainly a valid viewpoint, that there simply shouldn't be anything other than electronic only journals. Or to take it further (which I acknowledge isn't exactly what you said) that there shouldn't even be journals that attempt to bestow prestige at all (ie that should be a process of post publication of some sort). But it's also about the realistic challenges of running a sustainable business in academia. PLoS figured out a formula that works for a portion of the market with PLoS One. Note that that doesn't really work for the humanities and social sciences because the funding situation is so different. So then you have Open Library of Humanities, which is surviving currently on grant money with the hopes that they can get universities to fund their journals (not all that different than subscriptions to be honest, just that they are a nonprofit). But it's entirely unclear if that's going to be sustainable. So even a brand new state of the art low cost journal needs to find funding somewhere. How that works in STEM might make sense (APCs coming from research funding) but how it works outside of that is entirely undefined.

capnrefsmmat 11y ago

I think point #2 is only true for LaTeX-heavy fields like math, physics, and statistics. It's certainly not true for biology, medicine, psychology, or other fields where Word is king. In biology and medicine, NIH open-access requirements mean most articles are converted to XML (http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/). Articles are submitted in Word files, edited and converted to XML via some proprietary complicated toolchain, typeset to PDF with a big proprietary system like Arbortext, and shipped off to PubMed for archiving. Figures are usually TIFFs or PDFs converted to whatever formats are needed for the web or print. I don't know how the conversion process works, but I suspect that turning arbitrary Word files into semantic XML with accurate bibliographic cross-referencing metadata and high-quality tables and figures requires a lot of manual work. You have to deal with complicated tables, weird Word formatting, and whatever weird styling the authors think is a good idea. The bibliography has to be annotated with DOIs and converted to a standard format. LaTeX and BibTeX, or some other structured markup language, are undoubtedly much easier to deal with and much easier to automate. I think Michael Eisen of PLOS has commented on the situation and said they're actively working on rebuilding their publishing toolchain to automate more of the process, since it requires hours of work for every paper.

pgtan 11y ago
Automatic typography isn't! Let's suppose for example, there is $P_A$ in the text. According to the rules of math typesetting if A stays for description like "Alice", it should be set in the current math roman font i.e. $P_\text{A}$. So $P_A$ looks suspicious, what shall the typesetter do? 1. ignore everything and this way leave the typographic responsibility to the author; 2. set it correctly, because she is one of those underpaid TeX-typesetter, who can read out of the text, what A stands for; 3. send back a question to the author for clarifying. And this is just a simple example. The before/after gap betweeen author typoscripts an proper typesetted books is enormous. Sadly, the job of the scientific typesetter is not valued this days any more.
- gradstudent 11y ago
  The job of the scientific typesetter should not exist. Give me your reviews and your latex template (and only your latex template) and get out of the way.