6 ms·

This post makes no sense. ArXiv is a site to which papers are posted. ACM and IEEE are technical societies with a range of publications professionally managed

This post makes no sense. ArXiv is a site to which papers are posted. ACM and IEEE are technical societies with a range of publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited. They serve different needs and have--surprise surprise--different costs.

zozbot234 7y ago
You can host a peer-reviewed selection of papers as an "Overlay" over an open-access archive such as arxiv.org, at trivial cost. Closed-access journals don't even fund their peer-reviewers generally, so it's not like the "overlay" journal would be offering a worse deal from that POV.
- n4r9 7y ago
  Indeed, it costs very little to run a good quality journal and there's a growing network of them owned and managed by the scholarly community itself: https://freejournals.org/ https://freejournals.org/
jph00 7y ago
They don't pay for peer review. I'm not sure you mean by "professionally managed" or "edited" exactly - or why that would cost over $100m. (Disclaimer: I wrote the tweet. Although I didn't expect it to appear on HN...)
- denzil_correa 7y ago
  Thanks Jeremy for highlighting this issue. A lot of scientific publishers have hijacked "Open Access" to charge high fees for the same publication as before and pocket more money. For example, "Springer Blood Cancer Journal" charges $ 4,580 as OA fees. I can't imagine how one can rationalize that cost.
  - Someone 7y ago
    PLOS ONE’s fee is $1,595. A factor of 3 doesn’t seem inexplainable to me. That’s “Springer Nature Blood Cancer Journal”, so factors of 1½ in “better editing”, “older, less efficient systems” and “fewer publications/year, so lower efficiency of scale” could already do it. Also, is Nature working on digitizing old content? That can be costly (I remember reading somewhere that it could involve a) finding a library that has a copy and b) flying there to photograph it) and that’s a cost PLOS won’t ever have.
    - denzil_correa 7y ago
      > PLOS ONE’s fee is $1,595. A factor of 3 doesn’t seem inexplainable to me. You need to first explain why PLOS ONE is an appropriate baseline. A world class Open Access journal costs roughly $10 per submission [0]. Most arguments I have seen using PLOS ONE as a baseline, talk about the "non profit" part of PLOS. It has to be stressed here at that "non profit" doesn't mean PLOS works on a "non profit" business model. It just means that they generate profit AND the profit isn't distributed to its members, directors or officers [1]. [0] https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-launched/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-la... [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/non-profit_organizations https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/non-profit_organizations
  - lultimouomo 7y ago
    It's quite clear how you can rationalize it: * to advance your career you need to publish in certain specific journals * 5 grand is a reasonable amount of money to advance your career therefore: * it is reasonable to pay 5 grands to publish on such a journal
- murkt 7y ago
  They probably mean administration of a peer review. Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. [1] There are now tools that automate and speed up finding peer reviewers, though, like https://www.prophy.science/referee-finder https://www.prophy.science/referee-finder
  - denzil_correa 7y ago
    > Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. This is done by the Program Chairs of the conference who are professors at universities. ACM doesn't do or pay anything for it.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. All done by volunteers!
denzil_correa 7y ago
> This post makes no sense. ArXiv is a site to which papers are posted. ACM and IEEE are technical societies with a range of publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited I have been a reviewer of many ACM, Elsevier etc. conferences. The reviewers, editors don't get any money for their service. Regardless, "professional management" is not a sufficient argument for 33x / 190x the price difference . IEEE annual spend $92M in people costs and I doubt a single $ of it goes to any of these peer reviews or editors.
- b215826 7y ago
  It's not just about professional management. I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc., which arXiv doesn't have. I'm not justifying the costs -- I wouldn't be able to do that unless I see the breakdown of costs, e.g., how much it goes to the society, how much it goes to post-production, etc. I would also assume that ACM and IEEE journals also do a bit of copy editing that goes beyond mere spell checks before publishing the articles. Although copy editing and post-production is generally outsourced, it is still expensive. All this adds to the cost.
  - ringzero 7y ago
    > I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc., To the tune of a hundred million dollars? I can’t even remotely imagine how. If someone asked you to design a system to do all of those above things, would you actually come to the conclusion it’d cost a cool hundred mil yearly to operate?
    - b215826 7y ago
      I'd actually like to see a breakdown of IEEE costs. AFAIK, IEEE offers print-editions of several of its journals. I don't know who reads hard copies of journals these days, but I'm sure printing on actual physical paper would add to operating costs.
  - Certhas 7y ago
reggieband 7y ago
> surprise surprise--different costs The surprise is NOT that the costs are different. The surprise is the order of magnitude of the difference. The surprise is also the absolute value of the cost of IEEE given it's apparent activity. I have no idea if the massive spending on IEEE is reasonable given I have no insight into their org. I do agree the size of the costs as associated with the activities is suspicious.
- jessriedel 7y ago
  It's fine to think that the IEEE cost is too high for the value provided, but there's no reason to measure it with respect to a baseline defined by the arXiv. The arXiv is literally just an automated system pushing bits around (plus some unpaid volunteers who do light moderating). Likewise, I might think the person employed at the post office gets paid too much relative to the value they provide, but it would be silly to compare their salary cost to the maintenance cost of a blue steel Post Office box on the corner. ("Their health insurance alone costs 1000x the annual price of blue paint!")
chrisseaton 7y ago
> publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited That's done by the community - ACM don't fund that. They just run the conferences (which are paid and ticketed so presumably fund themselves) and host the paper files.
- tensor 7y ago
  Not to defend the price differential, but someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process. This is going to roughly track the number of submissions and isn't free.
  - chrisseaton 7y ago
    > someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process Lol that’s done by volunteer community members as well. It literally is free to the ACM (but the people are paid to do it by their institutions as part of their jobs.)
    - mturmon 7y ago
      Your lol is misinformed. ACM and IEEE produce and print actual dead-tree journals. This means selecting a fixed number of articles which are consistently formatted by an editorial process. Additionally, [edited to qualify: some but not all] IEEE Associate Editors are paid positions. Arxiv is not doing this. We can argue/debate about what is the value-add (and precise workflow difference) of the IEEE editorial process vs. arxiv, but there is a difference. Like the comment you responded to, I'm not defending the precise differential. I'm a past IEEE member (and author, and reviewer) and found their membership fees excessive.
      - chrisseaton 7y ago
        > Your lol is misinformed. In every ACM review committee I’ve participated in, it’s just volunteer members of the community emailing other other and using open source software to coordinate reviews.
      - 7y ago
thawaway1837 7y ago
IEEE at our college would send a significant amount of money for the student org. In addition the student fee likely did not even cover the basic costs of access provided by third parties, etc. They also have conferences, etc. to students, were the student fees almost certainly don’t cover the costs. Their expenses may be too high, but the comparison to arxiv is not helpful.

zozbot234 7y ago

You can host a peer-reviewed selection of papers as an "Overlay" over an open-access archive such as arxiv.org, at trivial cost. Closed-access journals don't even fund their peer-reviewers generally, so it's not like the "overlay" journal would be offering a worse deal from that POV.

n4r9 7y ago
Indeed, it costs very little to run a good quality journal and there's a growing network of them owned and managed by the scholarly community itself: https://freejournals.org/ https://freejournals.org/

jph00 7y ago

They don't pay for peer review. I'm not sure you mean by "professionally managed" or "edited" exactly - or why that would cost over $100m. (Disclaimer: I wrote the tweet. Although I didn't expect it to appear on HN...)

denzil_correa 7y ago
Thanks Jeremy for highlighting this issue. A lot of scientific publishers have hijacked "Open Access" to charge high fees for the same publication as before and pocket more money. For example, "Springer Blood Cancer Journal" charges $ 4,580 as OA fees. I can't imagine how one can rationalize that cost.
- Someone 7y ago
  PLOS ONE’s fee is $1,595. A factor of 3 doesn’t seem inexplainable to me. That’s “Springer Nature Blood Cancer Journal”, so factors of 1½ in “better editing”, “older, less efficient systems” and “fewer publications/year, so lower efficiency of scale” could already do it. Also, is Nature working on digitizing old content? That can be costly (I remember reading somewhere that it could involve a) finding a library that has a copy and b) flying there to photograph it) and that’s a cost PLOS won’t ever have.
  - denzil_correa 7y ago
    > PLOS ONE’s fee is $1,595. A factor of 3 doesn’t seem inexplainable to me. You need to first explain why PLOS ONE is an appropriate baseline. A world class Open Access journal costs roughly $10 per submission [0]. Most arguments I have seen using PLOS ONE as a baseline, talk about the "non profit" part of PLOS. It has to be stressed here at that "non profit" doesn't mean PLOS works on a "non profit" business model. It just means that they generate profit AND the profit isn't distributed to its members, directors or officers [1]. [0] https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-launched/ https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/discrete-analysis-la... [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/non-profit_organizations https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/non-profit_organizations
- lultimouomo 7y ago
  It's quite clear how you can rationalize it: * to advance your career you need to publish in certain specific journals * 5 grand is a reasonable amount of money to advance your career therefore: * it is reasonable to pay 5 grands to publish on such a journal
murkt 7y ago
They probably mean administration of a peer review. Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. [1] There are now tools that automate and speed up finding peer reviewers, though, like https://www.prophy.science/referee-finder https://www.prophy.science/referee-finder
- denzil_correa 7y ago
  > Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. This is done by the Program Chairs of the conference who are professors at universities. ACM doesn't do or pay anything for it.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > Someone has to find a suitable reviewer, which can be a bit time-consuming task [1], write to reviewers, just do all the coordination. All done by volunteers!

denzil_correa 7y ago

> This post makes no sense. ArXiv is a site to which papers are posted. ACM and IEEE are technical societies with a range of publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited I have been a reviewer of many ACM, Elsevier etc. conferences. The reviewers, editors don't get any money for their service. Regardless, "professional management" is not a sufficient argument for 33x / 190x the price difference . IEEE annual spend $92M in people costs and I doubt a single $ of it goes to any of these peer reviews or editors.

b215826 7y ago
It's not just about professional management. I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc., which arXiv doesn't have. I'm not justifying the costs -- I wouldn't be able to do that unless I see the breakdown of costs, e.g., how much it goes to the society, how much it goes to post-production, etc. I would also assume that ACM and IEEE journals also do a bit of copy editing that goes beyond mere spell checks before publishing the articles. Although copy editing and post-production is generally outsourced, it is still expensive. All this adds to the cost.
- ringzero 7y ago
  > I suspect IEEE and ACM have much more complicated infrastructure to handle submission, peer review, production, etc., To the tune of a hundred million dollars? I can’t even remotely imagine how. If someone asked you to design a system to do all of those above things, would you actually come to the conclusion it’d cost a cool hundred mil yearly to operate?
  - b215826 7y ago
    I'd actually like to see a breakdown of IEEE costs. AFAIK, IEEE offers print-editions of several of its journals. I don't know who reads hard copies of journals these days, but I'm sure printing on actual physical paper would add to operating costs.
- Certhas 7y ago

reggieband 7y ago

> surprise surprise--different costs The surprise is NOT that the costs are different. The surprise is the order of magnitude of the difference. The surprise is also the absolute value of the cost of IEEE given it's apparent activity. I have no idea if the massive spending on IEEE is reasonable given I have no insight into their org. I do agree the size of the costs as associated with the activities is suspicious.

jessriedel 7y ago
It's fine to think that the IEEE cost is too high for the value provided, but there's no reason to measure it with respect to a baseline defined by the arXiv. The arXiv is literally just an automated system pushing bits around (plus some unpaid volunteers who do light moderating). Likewise, I might think the person employed at the post office gets paid too much relative to the value they provide, but it would be silly to compare their salary cost to the maintenance cost of a blue steel Post Office box on the corner. ("Their health insurance alone costs 1000x the annual price of blue paint!")

chrisseaton 7y ago

> publications professionally managed, peer reviewed, and edited That's done by the community - ACM don't fund that. They just run the conferences (which are paid and ticketed so presumably fund themselves) and host the paper files.

tensor 7y ago
Not to defend the price differential, but someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process. This is going to roughly track the number of submissions and isn't free.
- chrisseaton 7y ago
  > someone has to solicit reviewers and manage the review process Lol that’s done by volunteer community members as well. It literally is free to the ACM (but the people are paid to do it by their institutions as part of their jobs.)
  - mturmon 7y ago
    Your lol is misinformed. ACM and IEEE produce and print actual dead-tree journals. This means selecting a fixed number of articles which are consistently formatted by an editorial process. Additionally, [edited to qualify: some but not all] IEEE Associate Editors are paid positions. Arxiv is not doing this. We can argue/debate about what is the value-add (and precise workflow difference) of the IEEE editorial process vs. arxiv, but there is a difference. Like the comment you responded to, I'm not defending the precise differential. I'm a past IEEE member (and author, and reviewer) and found their membership fees excessive.
    - chrisseaton 7y ago
      > Your lol is misinformed. In every ACM review committee I’ve participated in, it’s just volunteer members of the community emailing other other and using open source software to coordinate reviews.
    - 7y ago

thawaway1837 7y ago

IEEE at our college would send a significant amount of money for the student org. In addition the student fee likely did not even cover the basic costs of access provided by third parties, etc. They also have conferences, etc. to students, were the student fees almost certainly don’t cover the costs. Their expenses may be too high, but the comparison to arxiv is not helpful.