5 ms·

In CS, conferences (which organise peer review and pretty much all publish open-access proceedings) hardly ever charge more than something like $200 for attenda

by 4bpp 11y ago

In CS, conferences (which organise peer review and pretty much all publish open-access proceedings) hardly ever charge more than something like $200 for attendance, and this also pays for the conference venue, logistics and a slush fund of financial support for student attendees. Why would the peer review and publication part cost more in other fields? It seems much more likely that PLOS simply charges the "$1000 or so" because they can, and it's easy enough to piggyback on the traditional publisher narrative that they are actually providing this amount of added value.

capnrefsmmat 11y ago
PLOS is a non-profit, and employs full-time professional editors. People forget the weird workflow in any journal that does biomedical work (including most of the PLOS family): manuscripts are submitted as Word files, then converted to XML and reformatted by a semi-automated process. There's manual labor involved to format the references and cross-references, mark up tables and figures, and proofread the HTML, PDF, and XML versions. The XML is then submitted to PubMed Central for archival storage. There's a lot of manual labor involved in the profess. You can't just hand-wave away and say "peer review is provided for free" and assume the rest of the process is free.
- return0 11y ago
  For all that matters , a badly formatted "times 12" word document is just as fine as a "polished" research article. This is science we are talking about, it's not an infomercial. Besides, all journals have strict and long guidelines that all presumbissions follow. I just don't buy the manual labor argument.
  - Fomite 11y ago
    I've read enough journal articles that I've come to appreciate proper formatting, rather than "Time New Roman 12" Word documents or "Generic LaTeX Template #17"
    - brohee 11y ago
      DJB got a quite different view on journal provided LaTeX styles : https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html Nice value added by the MSRI style right here.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - capnrefsmmat 11y ago
    The federal NIH open access standards require JATS XML: http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ Proper formatting makes it possible to automatically extract bibliographic reference data, text-mine the contents for whatever interesting purposes you might think of, display it in apps and new formats, and store it for decades in a stable format.
- swiley 11y ago
  Then require that the papers be written in fucking markdown and have pandoc handle the 1" borders and 12pt times New Roman font.
  - capnrefsmmat 11y ago
    Markdown does not support cross-referencing of figures, tables, and sections, and doesn't have numbered "environments" like LaTeX (e.g. theorem, definition, example). It would need to be extended. There's a slow-moving Scholarly Markdown project, but I don't know what its status is. http://scholarlymarkdown.com/ http://scholarlymarkdown.com/ I agree with the sentiment, though. If there were some markup language that supported what academics do with LaTeX and Word, and converted cleanly to JATS XML and to nice-looking PDFs, it would be enormously useful.
- intrasight 11y ago
  Then they should tell authors: "give us your material conformant to our schema and we'll cut the price in half" That way the author can decide. I bet that most would stil submit Word documents.
- eru 11y ago
  Then just make the Word document open access. Someone at Google or Facebook can come up with some machine learning tools to automatically convert these into the proper format and add cross references.
KKKKkkkk1 11y ago
CS conference proceedings published by our friends at ACM and IEEE are usually for-pay just like their journals.
anonymousDan 11y ago
$200 is a lot lower than I've seen for top CS conferences recently, e.g. CCS 2015 was over a grand for the full conference last year: http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2015/pro_reg.html http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2015/pro_reg.html
- 4bpp 11y ago
  Yikes, and I have a paper in the oven I'm hoping to submit to CCS this year... I suppose my mental image was influenced by less flashy conferences along the lines of https://cie2013.wordpress.com/registration/ https://cie2013.wordpress.com/registration/. For what it's worth, I don't think there is any reason to assume the peer review and publishing effort put in by CiE is of lower quality - though its acceptance rate is likely to be higher than that of CCS, which may play a role if attendance is closer to being proportional to how much they accept than to how much is submitted.

by 4bpp 11y ago

capnrefsmmat 11y ago

PLOS is a non-profit, and employs full-time professional editors. People forget the weird workflow in any journal that does biomedical work (including most of the PLOS family): manuscripts are submitted as Word files, then converted to XML and reformatted by a semi-automated process. There's manual labor involved to format the references and cross-references, mark up tables and figures, and proofread the HTML, PDF, and XML versions. The XML is then submitted to PubMed Central for archival storage. There's a lot of manual labor involved in the profess. You can't just hand-wave away and say "peer review is provided for free" and assume the rest of the process is free.

return0 11y ago
For all that matters , a badly formatted "times 12" word document is just as fine as a "polished" research article. This is science we are talking about, it's not an infomercial. Besides, all journals have strict and long guidelines that all presumbissions follow. I just don't buy the manual labor argument.
- Fomite 11y ago
  I've read enough journal articles that I've come to appreciate proper formatting, rather than "Time New Roman 12" Word documents or "Generic LaTeX Template #17"
  - brohee 11y ago
    DJB got a quite different view on journal provided LaTeX styles : https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html https://cr.yp.to/writing/visual.html Nice value added by the MSRI style right here.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- capnrefsmmat 11y ago
  The federal NIH open access standards require JATS XML: http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/ Proper formatting makes it possible to automatically extract bibliographic reference data, text-mine the contents for whatever interesting purposes you might think of, display it in apps and new formats, and store it for decades in a stable format.
swiley 11y ago
Then require that the papers be written in fucking markdown and have pandoc handle the 1" borders and 12pt times New Roman font.
- capnrefsmmat 11y ago
  Markdown does not support cross-referencing of figures, tables, and sections, and doesn't have numbered "environments" like LaTeX (e.g. theorem, definition, example). It would need to be extended. There's a slow-moving Scholarly Markdown project, but I don't know what its status is. http://scholarlymarkdown.com/ http://scholarlymarkdown.com/ I agree with the sentiment, though. If there were some markup language that supported what academics do with LaTeX and Word, and converted cleanly to JATS XML and to nice-looking PDFs, it would be enormously useful.
intrasight 11y ago
Then they should tell authors: "give us your material conformant to our schema and we'll cut the price in half" That way the author can decide. I bet that most would stil submit Word documents.
eru 11y ago
Then just make the Word document open access. Someone at Google or Facebook can come up with some machine learning tools to automatically convert these into the proper format and add cross references.

KKKKkkkk1 11y ago

CS conference proceedings published by our friends at ACM and IEEE are usually for-pay just like their journals.

anonymousDan 11y ago

$200 is a lot lower than I've seen for top CS conferences recently, e.g. CCS 2015 was over a grand for the full conference last year: http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2015/pro_reg.html http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2015/pro_reg.html

4bpp 11y ago
Yikes, and I have a paper in the oven I'm hoping to submit to CCS this year... I suppose my mental image was influenced by less flashy conferences along the lines of https://cie2013.wordpress.com/registration/ https://cie2013.wordpress.com/registration/. For what it's worth, I don't think there is any reason to assume the peer review and publishing effort put in by CiE is of lower quality - though its acceptance rate is likely to be higher than that of CCS, which may play a role if attendance is closer to being proportional to how much they accept than to how much is submitted.