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When thinking about the cost of providing the services journals provide, I’m always struck by the example of PloS - non-profit, set up with the mission of promo

by czzr 6y ago

When thinking about the cost of providing the services journals provide, I’m always struck by the example of PloS - non-profit, set up with the mission of promoting open access, and just about surviving by charging authors $2000-$3000 per article. I can only conclude that managing journals is not as cost free as most people in this thread seem to think, for whatever reason.

dfdz 6y ago
You should not be getting down voted. I am an early career academic; there are some new non-profit open access journals that I would consider publishing in that cost ~$500 dollars to publish a paper. Everything is on arXix so I cannot justify the expense (perhaps if I was late in my career with lots of grant money I would help to support these journals..)
- czzr 6y ago
  That’s interesting. I always thought that it was early career researchers who had to publish in journals to establish their reputations. Does it not work that way for you?
  - s0rce 6y ago
    In some fields you can probably just put up preprints if they are important enough and get noticed, otherwise I assume the OP meant they are publishing in for profit not open access journals that cost less for the author (via charging everyone else).
zucker42 6y ago
Better to get institutional support up front and make scientific knowledge freely available then to not charge authors and then limit access with noisome subscription fees.
pas 6y ago
What!? 2-3K? For .. what? Where does that money go? I mean referees don't get paid. And there's nothing else to do really if it's a digital journal.
Vinnl 6y ago
And PLoS has, unfortunately, been getting in financial problems because Nature started a competitor that provides exactly the same service (I think slightly more expensive, but might be wrong there), but with the Nature brand name. Which provides a hint as to what the most important product is that publishers sell.

by czzr 6y ago

dfdz 6y ago

You should not be getting down voted. I am an early career academic; there are some new non-profit open access journals that I would consider publishing in that cost ~$500 dollars to publish a paper. Everything is on arXix so I cannot justify the expense (perhaps if I was late in my career with lots of grant money I would help to support these journals..)

czzr 6y ago
That’s interesting. I always thought that it was early career researchers who had to publish in journals to establish their reputations. Does it not work that way for you?
- s0rce 6y ago
  In some fields you can probably just put up preprints if they are important enough and get noticed, otherwise I assume the OP meant they are publishing in for profit not open access journals that cost less for the author (via charging everyone else).

zucker42 6y ago

Better to get institutional support up front and make scientific knowledge freely available then to not charge authors and then limit access with noisome subscription fees.

pas 6y ago

What!? 2-3K? For .. what? Where does that money go? I mean referees don't get paid. And there's nothing else to do really if it's a digital journal.

Vinnl 6y ago

And PLoS has, unfortunately, been getting in financial problems because Nature started a competitor that provides exactly the same service (I think slightly more expensive, but might be wrong there), but with the Nature brand name. Which provides a hint as to what the most important product is that publishers sell.