3 ms·
I just don't get this. I was involved in a conference committee this year (CS is published in conferences), and as far as I know everyone from the general chair
by eslaught 8y ago
I just don't get this. I was involved in a conference committee this year (CS is published in conferences), and as far as I know everyone from the general chair on down was a volunteer. There were some costs like conference space for the program committee meeting that had to be covered via the cost of admission to the conference, but in a journal presumably even those would not exist since you don't need reviewers to meet in person.
As far as I know, the only ongoing costs for the publisher (not immediately recouped via conference admission) would be running their own website and providing downloads. These hardly seem like massive expenses to me.
I don't see any fundamental reason why the model in CS couldn't work for other disciplines even if you don't want to adopt conferences; people are willing to step up and do the work, so why is so much money going to the middle men?
- untilHellbanned 8y ago> so why is so much money going to the middle men? Because the scientific community hasn't put forth an alternative.
- dwheeler 8y ago> why is so much money going to the middle men? Because the middle men like getting free money, and it's not other people's jobs to fix the problem. If you're an academic, your job is to produce papers that get published, not fix the publishing system. If you're a library, your job is to make materials available to patrons, not fix the publishing industry. In contrast: If you're a for-profit publisher, your job is to maximize profit, which means minimize your costs and maximize your income. What's changed is that the costs are now so steep, and the value provided by publishers is so little, that it's become painfully obvious that scientific journal publishers don't provide value compared to the rent fees they charge everyone else.