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Let's look at these costs a little bit, and whether they still apply with the internet -- Printing: No need to have printed journals at all ever again. If a

Let's look at these costs a little bit, and whether they still apply with the internet -- Printing: No need to have printed journals at all ever again. If a library wants an archive they can do it on their local hp and bind it. Free. Reviewing: Done by volunteers. Free. Editing: Done in the reviewing process, plus journals don't "work with" authors helping them to craft their paragraphs. There is an editor who might say "this is unreadable, resubmit", but that's all. Free or darn close. Creating PDF's or publishable documents: This now happens on the researchers desk, and is basically free once you buy office software. There are plenty of people in a university to prep an article to be really, really pretty if you bother to print it out. Free. Hosting PDF's and data: Universities have enough leftover computers and FTE's that they can do this without charging an account. Free. So what is the cost to an open journal? The fact that it is going to inevitably do to the academic journal business what craigslist did to the newspaper classified business.... Sorry, time marches on.

tzs 16y ago
> Reviewing: Done by volunteers. Free Hmmm...work on one's own research in order to generate a paper that can get citations and advance one's career, or take time away from that to review other people's papers for free.
- notahacker 16y ago
  In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers. Even startup founders competing in the fast-moving world of business seem to find time to read and give feedback on things that interest them. I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers
  - tzs 16y ago
    > In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers Isn't that generally done by reading new papers that have been published AFTER they have been reviewed? > I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers. I don't think that's a good solution, because I'd rather have the best researchers doing research, rather than reviewing the papers of lesser researchers. What I think we need to do is recognize that researching and reviewing research are not necessarily done by the best people. For instance there are subjects where I probably could never become a researcher, because I just don't for some reason come up with new ideas in those subjects, but I can understand the new ideas others come up. Hence, I could potentially be a decent reviewer in those subjects. What could work would be a system where we have reviewer as a separate profession. Researchers submit papers to reviewers who review them and give feedback, and an overall rating which is digitally signed. When a paper is published (by whatever means--open access journal, the researcher's blog, whatever), the signed reviewer ratings can also be included. Over time, reviewers would develop reputations with readers, and researchers would hire high reputation reviewers to review their papers, allowing the good reviewers to make reviewing their full time job. When someone posts an unreviewed paper at arXiv.org, I'd expect that reviewers who have not built up reputations would review it for free, and publish their reviews. I'd expect sites would spring up specifically to host these reviews. It would be through these sites that new reviewers would built up their reputations to where researchers will start to pay them to get reviews.
- forkandwait 16y ago
  What I mean is that making reviews happen is not a cost borne by publishers, thus is not a cost that should be recovered by publishers in the form of subscription fees. Finding reviewers is hard: Good academics don't like to do it, because it doesn't contribute to promotion; bad academics are happy to do it because for them it does (at XYZ state), but they are at XYZ state for a reason, which means they aren't the best reviewers.
- pbhjpbhj 16y ago
  >Hmmm...work on one's own research in order to generate a paper that can get citations and advance one's career, or take time away from that to review other people's papers for free. As sibling poster notahacker says reviewing other work in the field is part of your own research effort or I'd warrant you're not doing it right. (I'm not an academic and have only done undergraduate level study).
mbreese 16y ago
> Sorry, time marches on. Quality always costs. I think that open access journals are net cheaper than their print counterparts, but it will always cost money to produce a good journal. Look at the PLoS group. They are the closest we have to a top-tier online-only journal and they produce a high quality journal with an excellent impact score. However, it still costs $2900 to get an article published (if it's accepted) in PLoS Biology. Why? Because that's their costs. You are also severely over estimating the ability of most academics to produce a good, publication ready, PDF. If you're publishing in a journal, there is a set look and feel that must be applied. No matter how good the work is, someone still has to apply the right layouts. I've published in a conference before where what you submit is a camera-ready document, but somehow no one seems to set things up the same way. And good luck getting a biologist to figure out LaTex... that isn't going to happen. What you're describing seems to be closer to a distributed combination of arXiv and PLoS One, which is where I think we'll end up moving in the future. However, for now, the hosting costs of the organization is not trivial. Even arXiv has started seeking external funding for support. I'm scared to think of the state of science if open journals are going to do to existing journals what craigslist did to newspapers. Now newspapers are struggling to figure out a way to pay for high-quality reporting in a world without a sustainable revenue model. The result is poorer quality news or news dominated by a few big players. In science, the journal system has long served as a filter for information. Sure, a purely open access environment would let more people publish quicker, but it would also fill up the scientific record with a lot more noise. And there will always be costs to filtering signal from noise.
- _delirium 16y ago
  You are also severely over estimating the ability of most academics to produce a good, publication ready, PDF. If you're publishing in a journal, there is a set look and feel that must be applied. No matter how good the work is, someone still has to apply the right layouts. In computer science these days, there are very few journals that do any of this for you. The standard, even for expensive, non-open-access Springer journals, is to require the authors to submit camera-ready PDFs. Maybe that isn't ideal, but the closed-access journals mostly aren't any more full-service than the open-access journals on that front, so it's not clear what the money is buying us as authors. All the publishers provide are Word and LaTeX templates, some formatting instructions, and loud complaints if you get anything wrong. The only major journals in my area I can think of that do significant in-house professional layout are the IEEE's "magazine-style" journals targeted at a mixed academic/professional audience (they go for a full-color, glossy-magazine look). The IEEE journals that don't fall into that category require authors to submit camera-ready PDFs, though.
jonnydover 16y ago
I'm so biased that it's almost ludicrous to read my comment, but I'm an editor at an international medical journal, I get paid for it, and I work hard to make it a great publication. Among my responsibilities are that I take care of manuscript workflow and make international (non-english) submissions readable. I am a dedicated open access fanatic, which is why I'm here (pointed by an oa source), but I think that people like me, in the medicine field, can be easily supported by advertising and medical societies. I think your analysis is largely right apart from the question of editing, especially considering that clarity is absolutely among the most important values in scientific communication.

tzs 16y ago

> Reviewing: Done by volunteers. Free Hmmm...work on one's own research in order to generate a paper that can get citations and advance one's career, or take time away from that to review other people's papers for free.

notahacker 16y ago
In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers. Even startup founders competing in the fast-moving world of business seem to find time to read and give feedback on things that interest them. I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers
- tzs 16y ago
  > In most academic disciplines reading and critically analysing current research on a particular topic is a fundamental part of generating research papers Isn't that generally done by reading new papers that have been published AFTER they have been reviewed? > I don't think a shortage of people willing to review papers is going to be a problem, and if it is, it's a problem that could easily be solved by the prestigious open access journals requiring those submitting papers to set aside time to participate in the peer review process of others' papers. I don't think that's a good solution, because I'd rather have the best researchers doing research, rather than reviewing the papers of lesser researchers. What I think we need to do is recognize that researching and reviewing research are not necessarily done by the best people. For instance there are subjects where I probably could never become a researcher, because I just don't for some reason come up with new ideas in those subjects, but I can understand the new ideas others come up. Hence, I could potentially be a decent reviewer in those subjects. What could work would be a system where we have reviewer as a separate profession. Researchers submit papers to reviewers who review them and give feedback, and an overall rating which is digitally signed. When a paper is published (by whatever means--open access journal, the researcher's blog, whatever), the signed reviewer ratings can also be included. Over time, reviewers would develop reputations with readers, and researchers would hire high reputation reviewers to review their papers, allowing the good reviewers to make reviewing their full time job. When someone posts an unreviewed paper at arXiv.org, I'd expect that reviewers who have not built up reputations would review it for free, and publish their reviews. I'd expect sites would spring up specifically to host these reviews. It would be through these sites that new reviewers would built up their reputations to where researchers will start to pay them to get reviews.
forkandwait 16y ago
What I mean is that making reviews happen is not a cost borne by publishers, thus is not a cost that should be recovered by publishers in the form of subscription fees. Finding reviewers is hard: Good academics don't like to do it, because it doesn't contribute to promotion; bad academics are happy to do it because for them it does (at XYZ state), but they are at XYZ state for a reason, which means they aren't the best reviewers.
pbhjpbhj 16y ago
>Hmmm...work on one's own research in order to generate a paper that can get citations and advance one's career, or take time away from that to review other people's papers for free. As sibling poster notahacker says reviewing other work in the field is part of your own research effort or I'd warrant you're not doing it right. (I'm not an academic and have only done undergraduate level study).

mbreese 16y ago

> Sorry, time marches on. Quality always costs. I think that open access journals are net cheaper than their print counterparts, but it will always cost money to produce a good journal. Look at the PLoS group. They are the closest we have to a top-tier online-only journal and they produce a high quality journal with an excellent impact score. However, it still costs $2900 to get an article published (if it's accepted) in PLoS Biology. Why? Because that's their costs. You are also severely over estimating the ability of most academics to produce a good, publication ready, PDF. If you're publishing in a journal, there is a set look and feel that must be applied. No matter how good the work is, someone still has to apply the right layouts. I've published in a conference before where what you submit is a camera-ready document, but somehow no one seems to set things up the same way. And good luck getting a biologist to figure out LaTex... that isn't going to happen. What you're describing seems to be closer to a distributed combination of arXiv and PLoS One, which is where I think we'll end up moving in the future. However, for now, the hosting costs of the organization is not trivial. Even arXiv has started seeking external funding for support. I'm scared to think of the state of science if open journals are going to do to existing journals what craigslist did to newspapers. Now newspapers are struggling to figure out a way to pay for high-quality reporting in a world without a sustainable revenue model. The result is poorer quality news or news dominated by a few big players. In science, the journal system has long served as a filter for information. Sure, a purely open access environment would let more people publish quicker, but it would also fill up the scientific record with a lot more noise. And there will always be costs to filtering signal from noise.

_delirium 16y ago
You are also severely over estimating the ability of most academics to produce a good, publication ready, PDF. If you're publishing in a journal, there is a set look and feel that must be applied. No matter how good the work is, someone still has to apply the right layouts. In computer science these days, there are very few journals that do any of this for you. The standard, even for expensive, non-open-access Springer journals, is to require the authors to submit camera-ready PDFs. Maybe that isn't ideal, but the closed-access journals mostly aren't any more full-service than the open-access journals on that front, so it's not clear what the money is buying us as authors. All the publishers provide are Word and LaTeX templates, some formatting instructions, and loud complaints if you get anything wrong. The only major journals in my area I can think of that do significant in-house professional layout are the IEEE's "magazine-style" journals targeted at a mixed academic/professional audience (they go for a full-color, glossy-magazine look). The IEEE journals that don't fall into that category require authors to submit camera-ready PDFs, though.

jonnydover 16y ago

I'm so biased that it's almost ludicrous to read my comment, but I'm an editor at an international medical journal, I get paid for it, and I work hard to make it a great publication. Among my responsibilities are that I take care of manuscript workflow and make international (non-english) submissions readable. I am a dedicated open access fanatic, which is why I'm here (pointed by an oa source), but I think that people like me, in the medicine field, can be easily supported by advertising and medical societies. I think your analysis is largely right apart from the question of editing, especially considering that clarity is absolutely among the most important values in scientific communication.