5 ms·

It seems reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work (professional typesetting i

It seems reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work (professional typesetting is important and expensive). Predatory journals exist and would exist independently of what the best practices of good journals are. I have received plenty of emails inviting me to submit work to predatory journals, but their low quality and lack of peer review and general ethics is pretty obvious and they are easy to avoid. They feel more like a spammy annoyance than a real threat.

chrisseaton 5y ago
> reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work In my experience, the author typesets themselves anyway - the journal doesn’t do this. And the clerical work is done by community volunteers - the journal doesn’t do that either.
- krastanov 5y ago
  In my experience with open access journals, if I am expected to typeset, I need to pay around 300$ for publication. If the journal does their typesetting, I pay on the order of thousands. Steep, but not unreasonable. And waivers exist.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Don't you just use a LaTeX template? I'm not really sure what typesetting there is to do beyond that? Whenever I publish a paper, I just send them a finished PDF. There's nothing more done with it than that I believe.
    - krastanov 5y ago
      LaTeX on its own does not magically solve all layout issues, especially if the exact placement of figures is pedagogically important or if the math equations are complicated. Usually you would end with 20ish compilation warnings (not errors) on a first draft. I think it is fine for a scientist to not bother with those, but I also think it is important for them to be fixed by someone in the final product. You can argue that I am snobish about typesetting, but that is different from saying that good typesetting does not involve an effort. Also, I have never sent a PDF for publication. I always send source files. I do not know of journals that would accept a PDF (except for early peer review).
subroutine 5y ago
In your opinion what would constitute a small fee? $10? $100? $3000? https://www.frontiersin.org/about/publishing-fees https://www.frontiersin.org/about/publishing-fees
- krastanov 5y ago
  In a sibling comment I mentioned. If they do professional typsetting, around 3000 is not crazy. If I do the typesetting, then ≤500 is what I would expect.
  - subroutine 5y ago
    Roughly how long does it take to typeset a 5 page manuscript?
    - krastanov 5y ago
      If you go for high quality and work on the figures is performed, my (unreliable) guess is half a day for a professional designer. It takes me much more, because my latex skills are limited and because I insist on using the most standard and reproducible tools/packages in latex.
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    Haha, can I get a few thousand dollars for typesetting my paper? That's absurd. Sure you can spend a month setting it in your printing press or illustrator or whatever, but just using the journal's template along with LaTeX is perfectly good nowadays, and the hardest part is getting to it to compile.
    - krastanov 5y ago
      Just using the journal template and looking only for compilation errors does not produce particularly good results. If I am preparing something for a journal like Quantum, where I am in charge of typesetting my work, it would take me a day or so to ensure figures are well placed and margins are not weird (in other words, not simply make it compile, but make it compile without warnings (not errors)). Most scientists do not care about the warnings latex emits as long as it compiles, and the results are ugly papers. I find it reasonable to pay $1000 to someone to take care of that processing (if they do a good job at it, which APS's and Nature's journals do).
andi999 5y ago
That small fee is usually ard 2000$.

chrisseaton 5y ago

> reasonable to me to pay a small one-time publication fee for an open access journal, to cover clerical and typesetting work In my experience, the author typesets themselves anyway - the journal doesn’t do this. And the clerical work is done by community volunteers - the journal doesn’t do that either.

krastanov 5y ago
In my experience with open access journals, if I am expected to typeset, I need to pay around 300$ for publication. If the journal does their typesetting, I pay on the order of thousands. Steep, but not unreasonable. And waivers exist.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  Don't you just use a LaTeX template? I'm not really sure what typesetting there is to do beyond that? Whenever I publish a paper, I just send them a finished PDF. There's nothing more done with it than that I believe.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    LaTeX on its own does not magically solve all layout issues, especially if the exact placement of figures is pedagogically important or if the math equations are complicated. Usually you would end with 20ish compilation warnings (not errors) on a first draft. I think it is fine for a scientist to not bother with those, but I also think it is important for them to be fixed by someone in the final product. You can argue that I am snobish about typesetting, but that is different from saying that good typesetting does not involve an effort. Also, I have never sent a PDF for publication. I always send source files. I do not know of journals that would accept a PDF (except for early peer review).

subroutine 5y ago

In your opinion what would constitute a small fee? $10? $100? $3000? https://www.frontiersin.org/about/publishing-fees https://www.frontiersin.org/about/publishing-fees

krastanov 5y ago
In a sibling comment I mentioned. If they do professional typsetting, around 3000 is not crazy. If I do the typesetting, then ≤500 is what I would expect.
- subroutine 5y ago
  Roughly how long does it take to typeset a 5 page manuscript?
  - krastanov 5y ago
    If you go for high quality and work on the figures is performed, my (unreliable) guess is half a day for a professional designer. It takes me much more, because my latex skills are limited and because I insist on using the most standard and reproducible tools/packages in latex.
- Y_Y 5y ago
  Haha, can I get a few thousand dollars for typesetting my paper? That's absurd. Sure you can spend a month setting it in your printing press or illustrator or whatever, but just using the journal's template along with LaTeX is perfectly good nowadays, and the hardest part is getting to it to compile.
  - krastanov 5y ago
    Just using the journal template and looking only for compilation errors does not produce particularly good results. If I am preparing something for a journal like Quantum, where I am in charge of typesetting my work, it would take me a day or so to ensure figures are well placed and margins are not weird (in other words, not simply make it compile, but make it compile without warnings (not errors)). Most scientists do not care about the warnings latex emits as long as it compiles, and the results are ugly papers. I find it reasonable to pay $1000 to someone to take care of that processing (if they do a good job at it, which APS's and Nature's journals do).

andi999 5y ago

That small fee is usually ard 2000$.