3 ms·
> 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,
by 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 agoThey 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 agoPerhaps they have to manually apply Latex templates with a Morse key.
- TeMPOraL 9y agoGood 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 agoAll 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 agoNot Nature, reviewers.
- dagw 9y agoNature 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.
- robotresearcher 9y agoBut Nature sells subscriptions and advertising...
- Finnucane 9y agoPublishing isn't that generous, in general, salary-wise. Only the folks at the top are getting that kind of money. Also, vetting submissions should be a relatively small part of your time. When you're reading a lot of submissions, you learn how to weed out the weak fairly quickly.