
That $35 that scientific journals charge goes 100% to publisher, 0% to authors - berkeleyjunk
https://twitter.com/hwitteman/status/1015049411276300289
======
olliej
They also don't pay reviewers. The costs for a journal are only the cost of
sending a webpage (which they charge what, $30 for?), the paper journal itself
(for some absurd amount each year).

They do not pay the authors for the content, they do not pay the reviewers
(who are the "added value" they harp on about).

They're basically a tool that converts tax payer money (the vast majority of
those people writing papers are paid in part or entirely by tax payer funds)
into private money for the publisher.

~~~
twoslide
I agree with what you've said - one thing that is sometimes overlooked is that
publishers pay academic societies for the right to use the journal. I am on an
editorial board for a small-ish society: we make about $5000 per year in
member dues (they are low) and about $120,000 per year in publisher royalties.
We use this to fund grant programs, scholarships, conferences, etc, so it is
not all bad, but yes the publisher is probably making much more.

~~~
xevb3k
Well, academic societies like this are the problem.

When high journal fees are talked about an often over looked fact is that
scientists chose this model. Scientific journals were originally run as non-
profits by their members.

I guess it was considered too much hassle, and they decided to move production
too an external company... that’s when all this rent seeking behavior began.

My opinion really, is that scientists themselves should move back to the
scientific society runs the journal model. It doesn’t make much work to
publish a bunch of PDFs in an archive anymore.

~~~
ISL
In physics, we do. The American Physical Society (APS) journals are the gold
standard in my field.

I'm a huge proponent of open-access publishing, but one must also appreciate
the importance of the journals to the health of the society.

Here are relevant passages from statements by both candidates for treasurer in
the 2018 APS election:

Candidate 1: James Baird

 _For now, there would seem to be three principal threats to the financial
health of the Society. These are:

1\. Open Access Publishing: Paid library subscriptions to APS journals
constitute the largest single source of income to the society. Open access
publishing threatens this subscription model. If paid library subscriptions
disappear entirely, a new payer or payers will need to be found. Currently,
this appears to be the author or the author’s institution. APS open access
journal, Physical Review X, and the open access opportunities offered by the
other Physical Review journals, are an ongoing experiment. The treasurer will
need to be alert to financial trends in open access publishing._

Candidate 2: James Hollenhorst

 _APS is in very good shape, both in carrying out its mission and in its
financial health. Nevertheless, the Society and its membership face many
challenges, not the least of which is the threat to the business model due to
rapid changes in the scientific publishing field. Open access is the rallying
cry from the government, the universities, and from the readers and authors of
our journal articles; but someone has to pay for the added value that APS
brings._

~~~
hyeonwho4
What is the "added value" the society brings? If there was enough value add
_for researchers_ , then it could be incorporated into the membership fees.
Conferences can be funded by commercial booths or higher attendance fees (most
academic attendees are already paid for by grants); student conference
scholarships can be paid for by a trust estabilshed by and promoted to senior
scientists. The only other added value I can think of is political lobbying.

~~~
Gauc2
The society is a network of researchers with like interests. Political
lobbying is also important for a lot of academic societies (like APS).

I find it interesting that you are advocating the removal of a current
capitalistic/greedy funding model and replacing it with...another
capitalistic/advertising model.

~~~
windows_tips
That post doesn't advocate for a new model; it just points out possible
deficiencies in current conceptions.

>The society is a network of researchers with like interests.

So, the added value is for the researchers in the network, but that value is
subsidized by the "payers", who are not the researchers?

> _Open access publishing threatens this subscription model. If paid library
> subscriptions disappear entirely, a new payer or payers will need to be
> found._

------
throwawaymath
Is it strictly true that authors are allowed to send you their papers if you
email them? Are they allowed to send the published version, or must they send
a preprint? If they can send you the published version, why can't they host it
somewhere? And if they can only send the preprint version, why not put it up
on arXiv anyway?

I don't mean to cast doubt on the tweet's purpose (I agree with it), and for
what it's worth I've emailed other researchers for paper access as well. I
would just like to see some proper legal analysis behind these questions,
because I see the same point repeated frequently by scientists who are _not_
lawyers.

It would be pretty cool if there were a platform that automated your request
to get a paper from an author. I don't know how that would be plausible
without hosting the papers though, and I imagine that would get into trouble.

~~~
olliej
The submission requirements explicitly require authors to not make any papers
they submit available elsewhere.

~~~
teraflop
I don't think that's normally true. Do you have an example of a journal with
such a policy?

You might be mistakenly thinking of the requirement not to _submit_ the same
paper concurrently to other journals. For example, ACM's policy:
[https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/author-
representat...](https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/author-
representations)

And from ACM's "Author Rights" page: "Authors can post the accepted, peer-
reviewed version prepared by the author [...] On Author's own Home Page"
[https://authors.acm.org/main.html](https://authors.acm.org/main.html)

~~~
jhbadger
It's not common anymore fortunately, but as recently as five years ago most
biology journals were _very_ preprint unfriendly and considered trying to
publish a work already on a preprint server as a scam similar to republishing
a journal article. Things are finally trying turning around, although
preprints in biology are still very rare as opposed to those in CS or physics.

~~~
pletnes
A shout out to biorxiv.org for doing a great job there!

------
titzer
I'm getting fed up with the for-profit scientific journal system. I was
recently invited to submit an article to a new journal on computer networking
of some kind. They mine publications and just start mailing authors,
soliciting publications paid for _by authors_. I don't even work in computer
networking! Ugh so I wrote back:

Dear XXX,

I mean you no personal disrespect. However after reviewing your request, I
believe your institution serves no purpose in today's publishing world and
absolutely will not be paying it USD 1,250 for the privilege of publishing of
a paper in a field in which I am not an expert. Such a contribution would in
no way advance either Science or humanity, but instead only create more
confusion by frustrating several fields' fledgling efforts to sift the wheat
from the chaff using a proper scientific process.

Wishing your institution failure in the sincerest capacity,

YYY

~~~
knolan
The volume fake journal spam I’m getting lately is shocking. It seems they
just trawl for emails form high impact journals.

~~~
mrep
The type of spam which has inspired one of my favorite papers titled "Get me
off Your Fucking Mailing List":
[http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf](http://www.scs.stanford.edu/~dm/home/papers/remove.pdf)

------
hprotagonist
No scientific journal of any repute pays its authors. Or reviewers.

Authors (more precisely, the grants we get to do our research in academia, or
our employers in industry) pay the journal for the privilege of publishing
there, and offer our services as reviewers for brownie points.

~~~
fwip
You might even argue that helps protect the integrity of the journals.

If journals paid authors for published papers, there would be a greater
incentive for an author to tweak/falsify data to make the conclusions
stronger, the paper more exciting, and more attractive to publishers.

~~~
hprotagonist
we have this perverse incentive, but it’s located at a different place in the
chain: the grant agencies.

------
sebleon
Non-academic here: why distribute electronic copies of a paper through a
scientific journal? I can see why publishers existed pre-internet (printing
and distributing paper journals costs money), but seems outdated at this
point.

What's the incentive for a scientist to hand over copyrights to a journal?

~~~
pletnes
In many cases, it’s a scientist’s only way to advance his or her career.

~~~
Vinnl
This is the actual incentive, from a researcher's point of view. Even when
there are plenty of outlets that provide quality control, archival, etc.,
researchers still submit to the same traditional journals because those
journals' brand names are the stamp they need on their CV to advance an
academic career that is already incredibly unlikely (due to their being far
more applicants than positions).

------
l9k
In this increasingly digital world, the printed and distributed journal seem
less and less important. Of course individuals are still free to download and
print a paper for convenience.

So what if the scientific community/industry focused on the real added value.
Those are:

1\. Peer review

2\. Prestige

Because the pre-internet problem of distribution doesn't exist anymore (a
basic web server to host papers is relatively cheap), that would allow to
bypass traditional journals.

For that to happen, we would need a group of already reputed and respected
researchers to review the submitted articles. But because the journal fees
would be avoided, that means the money could be collected to pay those
reviewers.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
This. I hope more people start thinking along these lines so that we can find
a solution that respects and exploits the useful boundaries and incentives in
the system, resulting in better science.

> For that to happen, we would need a group of already reputed and respected
> researchers to review the submitted articles. But because the journal fees
> would be avoided, that means the money could be collected to pay those
> reviewers.

Scientists are motivated by curiosity for their field, prestige, and having a
stable job position were they can follow these motivations without fear. But
they are not motivated by money (grant applications are a necessary evil). Due
to this I don't think that you can start paying professors with stable
positions, but you could start permanently hiring those many highly qualified
mid-career academics who are still on the way towards a permanent position
(and may never reach it). The review quality will be improved if people review
full time, which can lead to journal prestige, faster review times, reviews
with a broader look on science.

------
cozzyd
Fortunately everyone in my field puts our papers on arxiv anyway. Sure, the
journal will format it differently and maybe catch some grammar mistakes, but
the content will be the same.

------
toomuchtodo
An interesting point is that if you email the author, they can send you their
paper for free legally. Couldn’t a platform be created (essentially an email
autoresponder) where you send a formatted request to the author, and the
platform processes the request and sends the paper to you on behalf of the
author?

~~~
fuzzyset
That's basically [https://arxiv.org/](https://arxiv.org/). The pre-print
copyright (i.e. before editor/review comments) still belongs to the author so
they can post it.

~~~
gervase
The IEEE recently revised their copyright assignment terms to explicitly
permit authors to upload the POST-review publication to Arxiv, along with a
few other outlets.[0]

[0]: [https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/publish-with-
ieee/author-e...](https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/publish-with-ieee/author-
education-resources/guidelines-and-policies/policy-posting-your-article/)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Would you know if there’s an effort to backfill Arxiv with post review
publications (superseding the previously published drafts)?

------
mjfl
They have found a way to bottle prestige which is extremely profitable. It has
negative marginal cost and only you can distribute it.

------
pc86
Do the authors own the IP for their journals? I was under the impression that
in most instances the IP was either public or owned by the
university/instition.

~~~
knolan
The journal usually takes copyright but any IP should be protected before
publishing. Generally all the IP owned by the author’s employer.

~~~
Fomite
IP should really be protected before publishing because publishing counts as a
public disclosure and in the U.S. starts the clock ticking.

~~~
knolan
Yes, exactly.

------
sytelus
The rebellion against pay-walled research publications really needs to be
holistically supported by all researchers. The big problem is that lot of
"good" journals have also pay-walled publications that they pay nothing to
authors but charge ridiculous amount per publication. This includes big names
like Nature and several publications of IEEE.

------
stilley2
Every time stuff like this comes up I think of these guys
[http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/post/40](http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/post/40)

This is the best model I've seen for modern publishing

------
supernova87a
I agree it's become a problem and place for companies to milk the system.

What is the alternative? There will be costs. How _should_ it be paid for,
which both maintains quality and is fair to authors?

~~~
jdietrich
There are lots of different ways to pay for it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access)

------
PunchTornado
why is this a surprise for anyone? of course you don't get paid for publishing
in a scientific journal.

~~~
rflrob
If Dan Brown sells 80 million copies of The Da Vinci Code, he has probably
worked something out with his publisher that he gets some amount of money per
book sold. If Michael Jackson sells 45 million copies of Thriller, he probably
gets a cut of each sale. If, for some weird reason, a million people pay $35
to download the CRISPR gene editing paper, Jennifer Doudna is probably not
getting a penny of that. It's surprising to many people not in science that
the usual model of "I pay publisher $x for a bunch of bytes, then publisher
gives y% of that to the person who came up with that sequence of bytes"
doesn't apply in science.

~~~
j7ake
Many papers in Nature can be found free.

Here is a paper from Doudna lab published in Nature. It should be free through
PubMed Central.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918688/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5918688/)

------
quickben
"we are allowed to send them to you for free".

Keyword: allowed.

How can these smart and brave people, that push the boundaries of human
understanding and knowledge, act so stupid.

~~~
natosaichek
what would be stupid about them sending someone a copy of their article for
free?

~~~
Whitestrake
I think that GP has an issue with the implication that the publisher is in a
position of power to allow this behaviour in the first place and could also
possibly deny it.

------
thetruthseeker1
While this is sad, if the scientific journals end up paying the authors, it
won’t be 35$ anymore, it will be more(which I am happy to pay). The publishers
I am sure won’t be taking a pay cut though!

------
twoslide
Does anyone actually access articles on a per-article basis? I would bet the
lion share of downloads (and revenues) are institutional subscriptions.

~~~
mrstew
When I worked at an academic publisher I was surprised by this, often it's
researchers at small or private institutions that don't have a library or one
that pays lots of subs.

Also - used to be you'd set this to have a price context for reprints (printed
version of the article with more logos) which were a much bigger & more
profitable revenue source. Pharma companies would buy '00s to distribute at
conferences.

~~~
Fomite
The pharma companies still do, at least at the conferences I go to.

------
qrbLPHiKpiux
Scihub

------
cheeze
Thank God for the arxiv and SciHub

------
anorphirith
I don't see anything wrong with that.

------
nickthemagicman
What a racket!

------
zokier
Preaching to the choir and racking up some cheap karma, are we?

