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> Publishers select the reviewers, analyze the reviews, and accept or reject. Orchestrating all this, by itself, is expensive. If academics can peer review, th

> Publishers select the reviewers, analyze the reviews, and accept or reject. Orchestrating all this, by itself, is expensive. If academics can peer review, they can do the analysing of reviews and accepting/rejecting, too. Even for-profit publishers often put all that work on an unpaid editorial board. Also, the costs do not have to be so high that they make Wiley or Springer-type for-profit journals the only way of publishing scholarship. In my own field, the most respected journals are printed by learned societies founded on the basis of an endowment or national academies of science. Since the labour and coordination is already done for free here by academics -- just like with many for-profit journals -- the only additional costs are typesetting and coordination with the printer/distributor, and it turns out that these costs are not so high that you have to lock your content down. These journals do not even have to charge submission fees like other journals in the "open access" movement claim is necessary; it just all doesn't cost that much.

allenz 9y ago
You argue that publishing does not need to be as expensive as $2000. Fair enough. I would be happy if we can agree that publishers do something, and that piracy is not an alternative. That point seems to be lost on the majority of commenters here.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  Well, I’m afraid that you’re not going to get any agreement from me. The whole point of my post is that, because the vast majority of the journal production process is carried out through the labour of unpaid academics – the only added value from publishers (coordination with printer/distributor) is insignificant and certainly isn’t worth locking this knowledge down. So, piracy is a great solution in the short term, and in the long run there should be a return of journals to learned societies. After all, that is where many of them were originally published anyway before the for-profits bought them up (promising to save on labour and ensure better quality, but in fact unpaid labour is still used and the quality of editing and typesetting has dropped drastically now that for-profit publishers often demand camera-ready copy with no quality inventions of their own).

allenz 9y ago

You argue that publishing does not need to be as expensive as $2000. Fair enough. I would be happy if we can agree that publishers do something, and that piracy is not an alternative. That point seems to be lost on the majority of commenters here.

Mediterraneo10 9y ago
Well, I’m afraid that you’re not going to get any agreement from me. The whole point of my post is that, because the vast majority of the journal production process is carried out through the labour of unpaid academics – the only added value from publishers (coordination with printer/distributor) is insignificant and certainly isn’t worth locking this knowledge down. So, piracy is a great solution in the short term, and in the long run there should be a return of journals to learned societies. After all, that is where many of them were originally published anyway before the for-profits bought them up (promising to save on labour and ensure better quality, but in fact unpaid labour is still used and the quality of editing and typesetting has dropped drastically now that for-profit publishers often demand camera-ready copy with no quality inventions of their own).