4 ms·

This seems like a fair price. If there are 30 articles in an issue of Nature that’s 360,000 per issue assuming everyone eventually publishes open access and sub

This seems like a fair price. If there are 30 articles in an issue of Nature that’s 360,000 per issue assuming everyone eventually publishes open access and subscriptions go to zero. That seems like a very reasonable cost for editing etc.

unmole 5y ago
This is sarcasm, right?
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Why? I hope this isn't a critique of the form "Why does Dropbox have 3,000 employees, I could build it in a weekend." There are a lot of costs to producing an issue of Nature.
  - unmole 5y ago
    The bulk of the heavy lifting for any scholarly journal is done by unpaid volunteers. JOSS calculates their cost of publishing a paper at around $100. What additional expenses does Nature incur that justify charging two orders of magnitude more? https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2019/06/cost-models-for-running-an-online-open-journal https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2019/06/cost-models-for-running-...
    - schleck8 5y ago
      Not every journal has the same selective standards
      - unmole 5y ago
        Again, the vetting of papers is done by unpaid volunteers.
        schleck8 5y ago
        > All submitted manuscripts are read by the editorial staff > Editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, and we do not always follow the majority recommendation https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/peer-review https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/p...
    - czzr 5y ago
      PLoS biology charges $5300 per article. PLoS was explicitly set up to provide a non-profit, open access alternative to commercial publishers - and it just about breaks even. So I don’t think that JOSS calculation is anything close to correct for any mid to high quality journal operating at a reasonable scale.
    - leemailll 5y ago
      What you said might or might not be true for those journals with volunteer editor. Nature, Science, and Cell they all have quite a few journals with hired editors, and the editorial process is quite different between those.

unmole 5y ago

This is sarcasm, right?

spoonjim 5y ago
Why? I hope this isn't a critique of the form "Why does Dropbox have 3,000 employees, I could build it in a weekend." There are a lot of costs to producing an issue of Nature.
- unmole 5y ago
  The bulk of the heavy lifting for any scholarly journal is done by unpaid volunteers. JOSS calculates their cost of publishing a paper at around $100. What additional expenses does Nature incur that justify charging two orders of magnitude more? https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2019/06/cost-models-for-running-an-online-open-journal https://blog.joss.theoj.org/2019/06/cost-models-for-running-...
  - schleck8 5y ago
    Not every journal has the same selective standards
    - unmole 5y ago
      Again, the vetting of papers is done by unpaid volunteers.
      - schleck8 5y ago
        > All submitted manuscripts are read by the editorial staff > Editorial decisions are not a matter of counting votes or numerical rank assessments, and we do not always follow the majority recommendation https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/peer-review https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/p...
  - czzr 5y ago
    PLoS biology charges $5300 per article. PLoS was explicitly set up to provide a non-profit, open access alternative to commercial publishers - and it just about breaks even. So I don’t think that JOSS calculation is anything close to correct for any mid to high quality journal operating at a reasonable scale.
  - leemailll 5y ago
    What you said might or might not be true for those journals with volunteer editor. Nature, Science, and Cell they all have quite a few journals with hired editors, and the editorial process is quite different between those.