4 ms·

I've seen the books of some professional societies and it really costs between $1000 and $3000 per article to publish. You need a skeletal secretarial staff and

I've seen the books of some professional societies and it really costs between $1000 and $3000 per article to publish. You need a skeletal secretarial staff and archival server. Most editors and reviewers work gratis in hopes others will do samewise when it is time they want to publish. Some journal collect this cost front end, e.g. Public Library of Science. Then reading is free online. Others charge an annual subscription three figures for individuals and four figures for libraries. Lots of scientists have a communication component in their grants for conferences and publication. Library subscriptions come out of the overhead tax on research most institutions add.

dwheeler 8y ago
> I've seen the books of some professional societies and it really costs between $1000 and $3000 per article to publish. If it costs $1000 to publish a scientific article, your first task is to fire everyone involved in publishing. The review of the scientific papers is done by volunteers, almost without exception. Most organizations expect camera-ready results. Few people want physical paper anymore; they're too inconvenient. PDF, please. What we're talking about is "put a PDF on a static website, so that search engines can find it". The price actually necessary is vanishingly small. The prices here reflect the fact that various organizations have managed to gain exclusive rights over results they didn't fund to develop. Since there's a strong demand and a monopoly on supply, prices skyrocket. Econ 101.
- Someone 8y ago
  https://www.plos.org/publication-fees https://www.plos.org/publication-fees: ”PLOS offsets publication expenses – including those of peer review management, journal production and online hosting and archiving – by charging a publication fee, also known as an Article Processing Charge (APC), to authors, institutions or funders for each article published.” Their cheapest journal is PLOS One, at $1.595 per article. Also, ”Manuscripts submitted to PLOS Special Collections may incur an additional fee”, which seems t be between $500 and $1.000

dwheeler 8y ago

> I've seen the books of some professional societies and it really costs between $1000 and $3000 per article to publish. If it costs $1000 to publish a scientific article, your first task is to fire everyone involved in publishing. The review of the scientific papers is done by volunteers, almost without exception. Most organizations expect camera-ready results. Few people want physical paper anymore; they're too inconvenient. PDF, please. What we're talking about is "put a PDF on a static website, so that search engines can find it". The price actually necessary is vanishingly small. The prices here reflect the fact that various organizations have managed to gain exclusive rights over results they didn't fund to develop. Since there's a strong demand and a monopoly on supply, prices skyrocket. Econ 101.

Someone 8y ago
https://www.plos.org/publication-fees https://www.plos.org/publication-fees: ”PLOS offsets publication expenses – including those of peer review management, journal production and online hosting and archiving – by charging a publication fee, also known as an Article Processing Charge (APC), to authors, institutions or funders for each article published.” Their cheapest journal is PLOS One, at $1.595 per article. Also, ”Manuscripts submitted to PLOS Special Collections may incur an additional fee”, which seems t be between $500 and $1.000