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"Publishing powerhouses like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have estimated its internal cost per-article to be around $3,700. Nature, meanwhile

"Publishing powerhouses like Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have estimated its internal cost per-article to be around $3,700. Nature, meanwhile, says that each article sets it back around $30,000 to $40,000" I work in book publishing, not journals, so I may be missing something in Nature's internal structure, but that seems like a lot to spend on one article. As in I think we spend less than that to do a whole book.

a_bonobo 9y ago
Those numbers can't be right, honestly. Bjoern Brembs has been writing a lot about open access publishing and the costs associated, here he cites a few numbers: >There is ample material on how much the publication of a scholarly open-access article costs. SciELO publishes for under US$100 per article. SciELO, however, publishes largely in regions of the world where labor and other associated costs are comparatively low. How much costs do other organizations cite? The Open Library of Humanities is on the record with about US$500, Ubiquity, Hindawi and PeerJ are also on record within the US$100-500 range and Scholastica, RIO Journal, Science Open, F1000Research or arpha mention similar figures. Thus, there are now about ten different companies or organizations which all agree that open access publishing costs about US$100-500 and Independent analysts agree: it is established that the actual costs of publishing a scholarly article are in the low hundreds of US$. Note that he focuses on open access articles, not closed access + open access articles, but I can't think of a reason why closed access would cost more. http://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/11/is-a-cost-neutral-transition-to-open-access-realistic/ http://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/11/is-a-cost-neutral-transitio...
- sampo 9y ago
  > Those numbers can't be right, honestly. Just a very rough calculation: If Nature has a staff of around 150 [1], each paid $100,000 year, 50 issues per year, 20 research articles per issue. This gives 150 times 100,000/(50 times 20) = $15,000 per article. My numbers are probably off in more than one way. [1] https://www.nature.com/nature/about/journal-staff https://www.nature.com/nature/about/journal-staff
  - gowld 9y ago
    They have a staff of 150 to publish 20 articles each month. That seems quite top-heavy. Remember that authors and reviewers of the articles are not paid.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      Perhaps they have to manually apply Latex templates with a Morse key.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Good point made by 'IanCal here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339193 Nature drops about 95% of submitted papers somewhere in the pipeline, so part of the costs applies to 20x more papers than you see in the end.
      - plopilop 9y ago
        All right, but then why are most open-access papers under $3000? If an editor can survive with these fees even when the paper will be publicly available, how can Nature need $30,000 for a paper people will pay to read?
        sampo 9y ago
        > why are most open-access papers under $3000? Ordinary scientific journals don't have reviewers in paid staff. An editor sends an article (without reading it) to 2-4 non-paid reviewers, and makes the publish / don't publish decision based on the reviews. Also the editor is not paid, either.
      - revelation 9y ago
        Not Nature, reviewers.
        dagw 9y ago
        Nature has in house staff editors and reviewers that vet papers before sending them out to per-review. Most papers sent to Nature get rejected long before the per-review process starts.
jacquesm 9y ago
Poor ones. Well in that case they really should simply go out of business. If your model is that broken you have no right to exist in the first place. But something - such as their profits posted year-after-year-after-year - makes me suspect that their story isn't complete.
s0rce 9y ago
When I published in Nature and Science (haven't published in PNAS but I have in other journals) it seemed to be a bit more organized with more actual employed staff vs. volunteer academic editors and so on. Not sure if that could explain this large a discrepancy.
- Fomite 9y ago
  This has been my experience at PNAS too. Professional editors, much more responsive interaction, stronger page layout, etc.
Someone 9y ago
Nature almost certainly didn’t round down that number, as a higher figure suits them better, but I do believe that they have significant costs. Reason? For every published article, Nature rejects about 12 (https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria...). That page also says ”On submission, the manuscript is assigned to an editor covering the subject area, who seeks informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues, and who makes this initial decision” ⇒ multiple persons, some of them employed by Nature, read each paper. Nature’s editors are highly educated (https://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/ https://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/), so their time won’t be cheap. That can add up. For example, _if_ it costs a manweek to decide whether to do peer review on a single paper, finding that one accepted paper out and would be a quarter of a man year of work. I guess the actual effort is lower, but still significant. People have to read those papers, and that takes time. And that is just step 1. Peer reviewers likely work for free, but managing volunteers costs money, too.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
frisco 9y ago
Nature almost certainly took their top-line costs and divided by number of articles to get those values, which is obviously a ridiculous way to look at article costs.
zerostar07 9y ago
thats because they are bullshiting. elsevier charges $5000 for open access which is supposed to cover its internal cost and then some. Nature is probably accounting here its various promotional / PR events and conferences as part of the cost of the article, which is unethical anyway, since the science should be popularized based on merit, not on the amount spent to advertise it.
Vinnl 9y ago
There's a few reasons for that. One is that they take their existing profit margins and incorporate them as "cost" - and these margins are really very comfortable. Another is that it's not the cost of one article, but also of every article they have had to reject instead of that one. That number is pretty high for Nature (the journal).
IanCal 9y ago
[disclaimer, work for Digital Science, whose parent company owns the parent (or just merged?) company that produces Nature, my own thoughts etc.] Nature have paid editors who also review articles before they go out for peer review, which means they have fairly obvious costs per article submitted (on top of other things like organising peer review). However, you don't pay to submit, you only pay if you're accepted. Nature accepts, I think, about 5% of the articles submitted to them. That means that for every fixed cost per submission the cost per paper published is 20x higher.
- remus 9y ago
  Is paying editors typical for a journal? Id guess Nature is comparatively well off financially, so would smaller journals be able to afford to pay editors in the same way?
  - IanCal 9y ago
    In general (as far as I'm aware), no, it's not usually the case.
- IanCal 9y ago
  I'd just like to clarify this: > However, you don't pay to submit, you only pay if you're accepted. I should have been clearer that the main Nature journal does not, I believe, charge for accepted papers as it charges readers instead. However the general setup is that with open access papers people pay only if accepted.

a_bonobo 9y ago

Those numbers can't be right, honestly. Bjoern Brembs has been writing a lot about open access publishing and the costs associated, here he cites a few numbers: >There is ample material on how much the publication of a scholarly open-access article costs. SciELO publishes for under US$100 per article. SciELO, however, publishes largely in regions of the world where labor and other associated costs are comparatively low. How much costs do other organizations cite? The Open Library of Humanities is on the record with about US$500, Ubiquity, Hindawi and PeerJ are also on record within the US$100-500 range and Scholastica, RIO Journal, Science Open, F1000Research or arpha mention similar figures. Thus, there are now about ten different companies or organizations which all agree that open access publishing costs about US$100-500 and Independent analysts agree: it is established that the actual costs of publishing a scholarly article are in the low hundreds of US$. Note that he focuses on open access articles, not closed access + open access articles, but I can't think of a reason why closed access would cost more. http://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/11/is-a-cost-neutral-transition-to-open-access-realistic/ http://bjoern.brembs.net/2017/11/is-a-cost-neutral-transitio...

sampo 9y ago
> Those numbers can't be right, honestly. Just a very rough calculation: If Nature has a staff of around 150 [1], each paid $100,000 year, 50 issues per year, 20 research articles per issue. This gives 150 times 100,000/(50 times 20) = $15,000 per article. My numbers are probably off in more than one way. [1] https://www.nature.com/nature/about/journal-staff https://www.nature.com/nature/about/journal-staff
- gowld 9y ago
  They have a staff of 150 to publish 20 articles each month. That seems quite top-heavy. Remember that authors and reviewers of the articles are not paid.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    Perhaps they have to manually apply Latex templates with a Morse key.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Good point made by 'IanCal here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16339193 Nature drops about 95% of submitted papers somewhere in the pipeline, so part of the costs applies to 20x more papers than you see in the end.
    - plopilop 9y ago
      All right, but then why are most open-access papers under $3000? If an editor can survive with these fees even when the paper will be publicly available, how can Nature need $30,000 for a paper people will pay to read?
      - sampo 9y ago
        > why are most open-access papers under $3000? Ordinary scientific journals don't have reviewers in paid staff. An editor sends an article (without reading it) to 2-4 non-paid reviewers, and makes the publish / don't publish decision based on the reviews. Also the editor is not paid, either.
    - revelation 9y ago
      Not Nature, reviewers.
      - dagw 9y ago
        Nature has in house staff editors and reviewers that vet papers before sending them out to per-review. Most papers sent to Nature get rejected long before the per-review process starts.

jacquesm 9y ago

Poor ones. Well in that case they really should simply go out of business. If your model is that broken you have no right to exist in the first place. But something - such as their profits posted year-after-year-after-year - makes me suspect that their story isn't complete.

s0rce 9y ago

When I published in Nature and Science (haven't published in PNAS but I have in other journals) it seemed to be a bit more organized with more actual employed staff vs. volunteer academic editors and so on. Not sure if that could explain this large a discrepancy.

Fomite 9y ago
This has been my experience at PNAS too. Professional editors, much more responsive interaction, stronger page layout, etc.

Someone 9y ago

Nature almost certainly didn’t round down that number, as a higher figure suits them better, but I do believe that they have significant costs. Reason? For every published article, Nature rejects about 12 (https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria-and-processes https://www.nature.com/nature/for-authors/editorial-criteria...). That page also says ”On submission, the manuscript is assigned to an editor covering the subject area, who seeks informal advice from scientific advisors and editorial colleagues, and who makes this initial decision” ⇒ multiple persons, some of them employed by Nature, read each paper. Nature’s editors are highly educated (https://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/ https://www.nature.com/nature/about/editors/), so their time won’t be cheap. That can add up. For example, _if_ it costs a manweek to decide whether to do peer review on a single paper, finding that one accepted paper out and would be a quarter of a man year of work. I guess the actual effort is lower, but still significant. People have to read those papers, and that takes time. And that is just step 1. Peer reviewers likely work for free, but managing volunteers costs money, too.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

frisco 9y ago

Nature almost certainly took their top-line costs and divided by number of articles to get those values, which is obviously a ridiculous way to look at article costs.

zerostar07 9y ago

thats because they are bullshiting. elsevier charges $5000 for open access which is supposed to cover its internal cost and then some. Nature is probably accounting here its various promotional / PR events and conferences as part of the cost of the article, which is unethical anyway, since the science should be popularized based on merit, not on the amount spent to advertise it.

Vinnl 9y ago

There's a few reasons for that. One is that they take their existing profit margins and incorporate them as "cost" - and these margins are really very comfortable. Another is that it's not the cost of one article, but also of every article they have had to reject instead of that one. That number is pretty high for Nature (the journal).

IanCal 9y ago

[disclaimer, work for Digital Science, whose parent company owns the parent (or just merged?) company that produces Nature, my own thoughts etc.] Nature have paid editors who also review articles before they go out for peer review, which means they have fairly obvious costs per article submitted (on top of other things like organising peer review). However, you don't pay to submit, you only pay if you're accepted. Nature accepts, I think, about 5% of the articles submitted to them. That means that for every fixed cost per submission the cost per paper published is 20x higher.

remus 9y ago
Is paying editors typical for a journal? Id guess Nature is comparatively well off financially, so would smaller journals be able to afford to pay editors in the same way?
- IanCal 9y ago
  In general (as far as I'm aware), no, it's not usually the case.
IanCal 9y ago
I'd just like to clarify this: > However, you don't pay to submit, you only pay if you're accepted. I should have been clearer that the main Nature journal does not, I believe, charge for accepted papers as it charges readers instead. However the general setup is that with open access papers people pay only if accepted.