6 ms·

Agreed. My experience with academic publishing is in the humanities, not sciences, but over the last 15 years I've seen the quality of editorial work go way dow

Agreed. My experience with academic publishing is in the humanities, not sciences, but over the last 15 years I've seen the quality of editorial work go way down at publishers I worked with, and increasing burden placed on the authors to do work that should be the publisher's job like exact typesetting and layout, as the publishers do anything they can to slash staff costs. A year or two ago I did an article with an Oxford University Press publication and the copy editor mistook a Latin book title for German and offered some nonsensical change based on that. It used to be that OUP staff had such a depth of linguistic knowledge that they themselves offered valuable feedback to authors. Now it appears to be a purely mechanical (and largely "offshored") process for them of pushing text through a pipeline to produce cash from captive markets (university libraries). As their prestige and monopolies wane, these publishers have to be able to offer authors some tangible benefit.

cup-of-tea 9y ago
My experience in science has been the same. I used to look at high quality publications and made it a goal of mine to have my own. Recently I delivered a number of high-quality figures in a vector format for use in a publication. I made especially sure that the text and line widths were appropriate for the document. When I saw the final version of the paper I was quite upset. Not only was the main text riddled with typos and inconsistencies (thanks to having multiple authors), the figures were rendered at low resolution in both print and PDF versions. I mean literally visible pixels on a printed page. So my work was distributed in a lower quality than my own PhD thesis. But the reason we still use these publishers is simple and we all know it. Many people are happy to complain about publishers but nobody is happy to take the hit on their own CV. You shouldn't use publishers for the above reasons, but did you see my latest Impact Factor XX paper in Journal You Have Heard Of?
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Also sad is that recent republication of classic book titles and too much publication of new niche works is done print-on-demand, with poor quality paper, poor printing, and very flimsy binding. If I’m going to spend $100 for a new book, I want something that was printed on a real press, with real binding. I tried buying a few reissued historical mathematics books published by Chelsea (now owned by the AMS) and I could have gotten a better output by taking the Internet Archive’s scan to my local copy shop. I quickly returned them and looked online for a used original. It makes me also not want to buy recent editions of e.g. Springer mathematics books: the technical content may be great, but the binding falls off and the figures all look like crap. It’s a hard choice whether to buy a used 15 year old copy with various technical errors sprinkled throughout, or a poorly made recent edition with corrections and an extra chapter or two.
  - icantdrive55 9y ago
    So many new books on Amazon are bad quality reprints. Certain subjects depend on quality, clear illustrations. I just assumed a new book meant quality of the original, but I was wrong. Years ago, when I was learning watch repair, I bought a new copy of The Watch Repairer's Manual, by Henry Fried. Published by the American Watchmaker's Press. It wasen't cheap then either. As I was reading it, the diagrams seemed fuzzy. I thought it was just me though. I'm a first edition collector, and have a huge library. You would think I would have spotted a bad printing run. Well, I happened to buy the same book off eBay, but was published in 1973. The pages, and illustrations were crisp, and clear. I learned my lesson though. It's a clever way to sell a new book. My lesson was don't trust new book anywhere. Used, old print is fine by me. New is not better when it comes to certain books. In the back of my mind, I wondered how anyone could offer a new copy of an obscure book. Well, it's by inferior printing. There's a market for quality reprints of certain books. We like to think we made so much progress, but not when it comes to printing books. We have regressed. Pick up any magazine from the 40's through the 70's, and you will notice the quality difference. I'm not saying we need to go back to Linotype printing. Im just saying we have regressed in printing. (My grandfather was a completely color blind printer. He went his whole career never telling anyone. He was laser focused on the print quality, or "tack sharp" as he used to say. Yes--completely color blind. He would ask his coworkers, customers if the colors looked right. He would then make color adjustments. His best advice to me was moderation in everything. This was coming from a 3 pack/day smoker, eight drink minimum, with a 1/2 hose feeding his lower extremities due to plaque. He lived until 80. Crazy?)
    - shliachtx 9y ago
      Literally why TeX exists. Donald Knuth couldn't tolerate the poor quality of digital typesetting.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      - wolfi1 9y ago
        that's not entirely correct. when linotype was dumped phototypesetting was introduced. and it seems it was not possible to reintroduce the typesetting of the linotype age. DEK wanted to have a digital typesetter reproducing the same quality of linotype. if the typesetting of that time and if it was digital at all was poor quality is unbeknownst to me
- nextos 9y ago
  And don't forget all the really nasty political things going on in the backstage of big 3 journals (Nature, Science & Cell). Big PIs often reach agreements with editors before writing their papers.
  - anonymousDan 9y ago
    Say what? Could you elaborate?
  - kobeya 9y ago
    Citations?
    - nextos 9y ago
      Well I can't cite anything, I'm just talking about my experience and things I've seen first hand many many times. If you're a PI on a big project or heading a big group, it's routine business to meet journal editors, invite them to your lab and reach publication agreements before writing your paper. Obviously the paper will still go to review. But even that is already a big hurdle you have bypassed. In the big 3 journals, it's equally tough to get to review than to pass reviews once there. Plus, with direct contact to the editor, it's easier to get your paper reviewed by friendlier peers and/or influence ultimate editorial decisions.
      - kobeya 9y ago
        That would be scandalous headline news if true.
        Myrmornis 9y ago
        It's standard in human genetics, at least in the UK. The editors of Nature have a close relationship with influential PIs and their labs, are present at social events / parties, and the general direction and appropriateness/desirability of papers are certainly discussed with the editors early in the process. These are projects with large budgets that span several years. Of course, there is still peer review, and it is still rigorous.
- infogulch 9y ago
  Hmm sounds similar to the prisoner's dilemma problem/tragedy of the commons.
Top19 9y ago
Sorry about your experience. One thing I want to say is that the quality of material put out by University Press publishers is head and shoulders above anything you’d usually find in Barnes and Noble while not insanely expensive like the $125 books Springer Publishing sells. University Press type publishers have always targeted upmarket since the 1970’s, when a wave of consolidation and focus on short-term profits squeezed those books out of regular publishing. So many books are written by idiot business consultants with nothing to say. Think Randi Zuckerberg but maybe not as bad. University Presses, to my eternal gratitude, do not seem to have this problem yet and all their books say something worth saying. Sorry to go on that rant, but just wanted to stick up a little bit forOxford University Press, which publishes the amazing “Very Short Introduction” series btw. Also would like to say your point is still valid. I’ve heard the same thing about the music industry. When you go to a label, they expect you to already have a marketing plan...weird
gcr 9y ago
This is an interesting perspective. For a few years, I've worked as a volunteer to process authors' PDF files for some larger conferences to place on our open access site. My job is to add a conference banner to the top of the first page, add PDF metadata, and re-stamp the page numbers at the bottom. Having a dedicated editor would definitely improve the quality of the results. You wouldn't believe what authors do to their PDF files before submission. I've seen papers that center an 8x11" copy of their paper in the middle of an A4 canvas. I've seen papers where all the pages are just giant bitmaps that show the paper (presumably to avoid plagiarism). I've seen papers that have incorrectly-embedded fonts, so after our pipeline, we didn't notice that all the text in figures was replaced by Chinese characters (sorry!). I've seen papers that have permuted font maps, so even though the paper looks correct on the screen, the letters on the OCR layer don't match what you see, making the work impossible to find on Google. Not to complain against the authors. We all have to break out our LaTeX tricks minutes before the submission deadline to fix that weird compile bug. My point is that it's important to have _some_ oversight. It's not enough to just zip up all the PDF files and call that "open access."

cup-of-tea 9y ago

My experience in science has been the same. I used to look at high quality publications and made it a goal of mine to have my own. Recently I delivered a number of high-quality figures in a vector format for use in a publication. I made especially sure that the text and line widths were appropriate for the document. When I saw the final version of the paper I was quite upset. Not only was the main text riddled with typos and inconsistencies (thanks to having multiple authors), the figures were rendered at low resolution in both print and PDF versions. I mean literally visible pixels on a printed page. So my work was distributed in a lower quality than my own PhD thesis. But the reason we still use these publishers is simple and we all know it. Many people are happy to complain about publishers but nobody is happy to take the hit on their own CV. You shouldn't use publishers for the above reasons, but did you see my latest Impact Factor XX paper in Journal You Have Heard Of?

jacobolus 9y ago
Also sad is that recent republication of classic book titles and too much publication of new niche works is done print-on-demand, with poor quality paper, poor printing, and very flimsy binding. If I’m going to spend $100 for a new book, I want something that was printed on a real press, with real binding. I tried buying a few reissued historical mathematics books published by Chelsea (now owned by the AMS) and I could have gotten a better output by taking the Internet Archive’s scan to my local copy shop. I quickly returned them and looked online for a used original. It makes me also not want to buy recent editions of e.g. Springer mathematics books: the technical content may be great, but the binding falls off and the figures all look like crap. It’s a hard choice whether to buy a used 15 year old copy with various technical errors sprinkled throughout, or a poorly made recent edition with corrections and an extra chapter or two.
- icantdrive55 9y ago
  So many new books on Amazon are bad quality reprints. Certain subjects depend on quality, clear illustrations. I just assumed a new book meant quality of the original, but I was wrong. Years ago, when I was learning watch repair, I bought a new copy of The Watch Repairer's Manual, by Henry Fried. Published by the American Watchmaker's Press. It wasen't cheap then either. As I was reading it, the diagrams seemed fuzzy. I thought it was just me though. I'm a first edition collector, and have a huge library. You would think I would have spotted a bad printing run. Well, I happened to buy the same book off eBay, but was published in 1973. The pages, and illustrations were crisp, and clear. I learned my lesson though. It's a clever way to sell a new book. My lesson was don't trust new book anywhere. Used, old print is fine by me. New is not better when it comes to certain books. In the back of my mind, I wondered how anyone could offer a new copy of an obscure book. Well, it's by inferior printing. There's a market for quality reprints of certain books. We like to think we made so much progress, but not when it comes to printing books. We have regressed. Pick up any magazine from the 40's through the 70's, and you will notice the quality difference. I'm not saying we need to go back to Linotype printing. Im just saying we have regressed in printing. (My grandfather was a completely color blind printer. He went his whole career never telling anyone. He was laser focused on the print quality, or "tack sharp" as he used to say. Yes--completely color blind. He would ask his coworkers, customers if the colors looked right. He would then make color adjustments. His best advice to me was moderation in everything. This was coming from a 3 pack/day smoker, eight drink minimum, with a 1/2 hose feeding his lower extremities due to plaque. He lived until 80. Crazy?)
  - shliachtx 9y ago
    Literally why TeX exists. Donald Knuth couldn't tolerate the poor quality of digital typesetting.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - wolfi1 9y ago
      that's not entirely correct. when linotype was dumped phototypesetting was introduced. and it seems it was not possible to reintroduce the typesetting of the linotype age. DEK wanted to have a digital typesetter reproducing the same quality of linotype. if the typesetting of that time and if it was digital at all was poor quality is unbeknownst to me
nextos 9y ago
And don't forget all the really nasty political things going on in the backstage of big 3 journals (Nature, Science & Cell). Big PIs often reach agreements with editors before writing their papers.
- anonymousDan 9y ago
  Say what? Could you elaborate?
- kobeya 9y ago
  Citations?
  - nextos 9y ago
    Well I can't cite anything, I'm just talking about my experience and things I've seen first hand many many times. If you're a PI on a big project or heading a big group, it's routine business to meet journal editors, invite them to your lab and reach publication agreements before writing your paper. Obviously the paper will still go to review. But even that is already a big hurdle you have bypassed. In the big 3 journals, it's equally tough to get to review than to pass reviews once there. Plus, with direct contact to the editor, it's easier to get your paper reviewed by friendlier peers and/or influence ultimate editorial decisions.
    - kobeya 9y ago
      That would be scandalous headline news if true.
      - Myrmornis 9y ago
        It's standard in human genetics, at least in the UK. The editors of Nature have a close relationship with influential PIs and their labs, are present at social events / parties, and the general direction and appropriateness/desirability of papers are certainly discussed with the editors early in the process. These are projects with large budgets that span several years. Of course, there is still peer review, and it is still rigorous.
infogulch 9y ago
Hmm sounds similar to the prisoner's dilemma problem/tragedy of the commons.

Top19 9y ago

Sorry about your experience. One thing I want to say is that the quality of material put out by University Press publishers is head and shoulders above anything you’d usually find in Barnes and Noble while not insanely expensive like the $125 books Springer Publishing sells. University Press type publishers have always targeted upmarket since the 1970’s, when a wave of consolidation and focus on short-term profits squeezed those books out of regular publishing. So many books are written by idiot business consultants with nothing to say. Think Randi Zuckerberg but maybe not as bad. University Presses, to my eternal gratitude, do not seem to have this problem yet and all their books say something worth saying. Sorry to go on that rant, but just wanted to stick up a little bit forOxford University Press, which publishes the amazing “Very Short Introduction” series btw. Also would like to say your point is still valid. I’ve heard the same thing about the music industry. When you go to a label, they expect you to already have a marketing plan...weird

gcr 9y ago

This is an interesting perspective. For a few years, I've worked as a volunteer to process authors' PDF files for some larger conferences to place on our open access site. My job is to add a conference banner to the top of the first page, add PDF metadata, and re-stamp the page numbers at the bottom. Having a dedicated editor would definitely improve the quality of the results. You wouldn't believe what authors do to their PDF files before submission. I've seen papers that center an 8x11" copy of their paper in the middle of an A4 canvas. I've seen papers where all the pages are just giant bitmaps that show the paper (presumably to avoid plagiarism). I've seen papers that have incorrectly-embedded fonts, so after our pipeline, we didn't notice that all the text in figures was replaced by Chinese characters (sorry!). I've seen papers that have permuted font maps, so even though the paper looks correct on the screen, the letters on the OCR layer don't match what you see, making the work impossible to find on Google. Not to complain against the authors. We all have to break out our LaTeX tricks minutes before the submission deadline to fix that weird compile bug. My point is that it's important to have _some_ oversight. It's not enough to just zip up all the PDF files and call that "open access."