
“You pay to read research you fund. That’s ludicrous” - feelthepain
http://www.wired.com/2016/04/stealing-publicly-funded-research-isnt-stealing/?mbid=social_twitter
======
mindcrime
I have to say, I'm a little surprised at how many people in this thread seem
to be taking the side of the publishers. If not completely, at least to some
extent. I look at this as being pretty cut and dried "if research is paid for
by tax dollars, it should be freely available to the public." I don't even see
how that's controversial.

That said, I understand the arguments that academics are sort of in a catch-22
situation since funding, tenure, etc. are based on journal publications,
impact factor, etc. But I'd like to think that we can all (mostly) agree that
the current system _is_ broken, and at least start talking about what it would
take to revise it.

At least some progress actually does seem to be happening organically. New
open access journals based on the arXiv overlay model are starting to appear,
like Discrete Analysis[1]. Hopefully over time this problem may correct
itself.

[1]:
[http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles](http://discreteanalysisjournal.com/articles)

~~~
mrdrozdov
To play devil's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid for
by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?

~~~
mindcrime
_To play devil 's advocate for a moment, surely there are other things paid
for by tax dollars where the benefit is indirect like it is in research?_

No doubt. And there are all sorts of discussions one could get into about what
should and shouldn't be publicly funded. As a Libertarian, I'm usually in the
minority on those discussions, so let's not even go into that. My take on this
is basically "if they're going to take my money and spend it, I at least want
the system to be fair" (as I perceive it). And at least in my world-view, I
think it's ridiculous to have to pay again just to read the research,
especially now that we're in the Internet age where distribution costs are
dramatically lower. If I wanted a paper journal mailed to me, sure, I'd be
fine paying for that (up to a point). But as cheap as it is to create a PDF
and slap it on a website, and then looking at how much journals are charging
per article, it just feels like a complete abuse.

~~~
mrdrozdov
I suppose the argument that I'd like to investigate is the true purpose of tax
dollars, since it's not explicitly clear to me how tax dollars are meant to be
used. I think that's a distinct line of reasoning from how research papers
should be shared more openly. It sounds like you'd probably agree that the
issues are separate, in which case tax dollar allocation may not need to be
involved in this conversation.

------
Houshalter
I hate how copyright now lasts indefinitely. There are many papers from the
50's by people who are dead, and these companies are still claiming ownership
over them. Copyright should last a relatively short time, and maybe be even
shorter if you don't pay a fee to get it extended. Perhaps even a special
exemption for scientific research.

If you could read all papers published 10 years ago for free, that would be
incredible, even if it still cost $35 to read a new paper.

See the science section here:
[https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976)

>1959 was another noteworthy year for science. C. P. Snow presented The Two
Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, an influential lecture about the gulf
between the sciences and the humanities. The programming language COBOL was
developed. Martin Gardner published the Three Prisoners Problem, a probability
theory paradox, in his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American.
Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison published Searching for Interstellar
Communications, a foundational work for the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence, in the journal Nature.

>If you follow the link from Nature above (and you do not have a subscription
or institutional access), you will see that this 1959 article is behind a
paywall. You can purchase it for $32. A distressing number of scientific
articles from 1959 require payment or a subscription or account, including
those in major journals such as Science and JAMA. And the institutional access
that many top scientists enjoy is not guaranteed—even institutions such as
Harvard have considered canceling their subscriptions because they could no
longer afford the escalating prices of major journal subscriptions.

~~~
cableshaft
I wish they'd just acknowledge that Disney really, really wants to keep their
IP forever, and just make a "Disney Exemption" -> if you're willing to pay all
the money you would normally pay lobbyists to lobby to keep copyright
perpetual, you get to keep your IP. Otherwise, you only get X number of years,
period. That way we can stop artificially extending copyright terms just to
make one corporation happy and ruining public domain for everyone else.

I know some people really want to make Disney play by everyone's rules, but
they just have too much damn money and influence. At least they do tend to
revive their old IP and not just let it sit there to rot indefinitely, like so
many other companies.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Maybe your pragmatic approach is right but I don't think I could settle for
"we'll do this for this company because our politicians are easily bought".
The real solution seems to be to get politicians with better ethics or create
laws that force them to comply with good morals ... then of course you need a
strong judiciary.

~~~
cableshaft
Ah yes, the "if only we voted in the _right_ politicians". My Dad likes to
make this argument till he's blue in the face, and those people never get
elected (and it's a different set of people for every individual, I bet you'd
disagree with most of his choices).

Of course it would fix things if all the right people got elected. But this is
the real world, and that reality almost never, ever happens. It's much easier
to get specific protections passed, especially ones that benefit one or more
corporations, than it is to make sure "no one gets elected whose vote can be
bought and believes in things different from me!"

The main reason I don't hold out much hope for my solution either is because
most corporations don't believe they'd have much to gain from limited
copyright, focusing too much on what they'd lose, rather than what they'd
gain, from being able to use so many newer IP without paying licensing fees.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>It's much easier to get specific protections passed, especially ones that
benefit one or more corporations, than it is to make sure "no one gets elected
whose vote can be bought and believes in things different from me!" //

It's a very good thing when people get elected who have different beliefs to
me as I'm not always right.

Also, a politician who sides with me because of a "bribe" is not a good thing
IMO; it rather suggests that I'm on the side that can't win through fair play,
or indeed that I'm on the side that favours those corrupt enough to pervert
democracy in their favour because of their wealth.

I don't think there's any evidence to show that a copyright term less than
life will damage artists, nor reduce impetus to create works. Indeed works
entering the public domain appear to stimulate creative work.

I don't agree with your "too rich to legislate against the preference of"
arguments for Disney. Indeed their wealth suggests strongly that the balance
between public protected monopoly and free use of works has been lost.

------
thaw13579
I think the most important point was brushed over in the article--that
journals offer prestige. Scientists are entirely aware of the problems, yet
they still volunteer to submit their work to them, because they significantly
improve the chances of promotion and tenure. These things are already
tremendously competitive, so most would rather not volunteer for a handicap by
publishing in other venues.

~~~
wrsh07
If it's truly misaligned incentives [ie universities are more likely to
promote researchers who publish in "top" journals], then it seems like a high-
powered university needs to change their criteria for promotion. Instead of
requiring publication in top journals for promo, look at other metrics for
quality [I imagine this differs some from one field to another].

Imagine if every conference charged speakers for speaking, and in order to get
promoted you had to speak at those conferences. It's the same thing. Except
most software engineers are happy not paying to speak at conferences because
their promo doesn't require it.

~~~
maaku
You get promotions and tenure for doing successful grant work that brings in
money to the University. You get the best grants by publishing in Science and
Nature. The government (main source of grants) shares the blame here.

~~~
dubya
Grants are not judged by government bureaucrats, but by committees of peer
researchers. (At least for NSF grants; not sure about NIH or others).

~~~
maaku
Working under the direction of a grant agency. I know, I worked at two such
institutes that managed $10m/yr grant money for planetary and biological
science. In this case (NASA) the selection was done based on recommendations
from a peer committee, but under directions from civil servants who had the
final say, and there was a definite culture of favoritism for the prestigious
closed journals. It was good for the institute too -- Science and Nature
publications and associated PR raised _our_ image in the eyes of our managers
at HQ in Washington.

------
harry8
Article blocked me for using adblock. I don't use adblock. So I don't read
wired and I'm confident I'm missing nothing.

~~~
ultramancool
[https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer](https://github.com/reek/anti-
adblock-killer)

------
bruceb
The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you
already pay for it. A lot of people don't even go to the parks now. Making
them free will mean more tax money from people who don't go to them.

How many people read this research? 1% of America? If it is free then tax
payers will have to pay more to make sure it is available. 99% percent will
pay to provide things they will never read.

To be clear I think it should be free but want to at least provide some
counter point (even if it is paper thin...)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
>How many people read this research? 1% of America?

If anything, it's 1% of the world. The problem is not limited to the US.

And it's a very significant 1% which is one of the biggest - if not literally
the biggest - drivers of the world economy.

>The counter argument to this is you pay to use national parks even though you
already pay for it.

Parks have huge continuing expenses. They're also owned in trust for the
public.

Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all. It's pure privatised
oligoply. It provides no useful public or private service of any kind.

There is _nothing_ academic publishers do that couldn't be done better in
other ways.

~~~
ikeboy
>Journal publishing has almost no expenses at all.

If their expenses of 60-80% of revenue is "almost nothing", surely their
revenue is also "almost nothing", and therefore we shouldn't care about it.

~~~
acidflask
To cite just one example, Elsevier consistently reports over $1b/yr profit on
$3b/yr revenue. Not exactly "almost nothing".

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

[https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-
acc...](https://libraries.mit.edu/scholarly/mit-open-access/open-access-at-
mit/mit-open-access-policy/publishers-and-the-mit-faculty-open-access-
policy/elsevier-fact-sheet/)

~~~
ikeboy
If $2b of costs is almost no expenses, then surely $1b of profit is as well.
You can't have it both ways, downplaying their costs and complaining about
their profit.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Well, the $2bn of "publishing costs" include paying their CEO tens of millions
a year[1], paying million-dollar packages to a number of other managers
including Nick Luff and David Palmer, and dropping 1-2 million a year on non-
executive board members who don't do anything at all.

Besides, do you really think it takes 28,000 people to publish a single
company's journals, given that the selection and review process is all being
done for them on a pro-bono basis? There are massive efficiencies there - but
the CEO of a 100-person non-profit couldn't justify a $30 million package, so
there is absolutely no incentive for change.

[1]
[http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?p...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=1244770&privcapId=402524)

~~~
ikeboy
If you can do it for less, go ahead. The fact that multiple companies all have
similar margins, and even open access (besides for the privately
funded/subsidized ones) has the same order of magnitude charges makes me think
it's unlikely.

~~~
acidflask
Actually, chemistry and physics do quite well with nonprofit publishers.
Compare the profit margins of for-profit publishers with non-profit ones like
the American Chemical Society. In 2015, the ACS made a $10m profit on $500m
gross revenue, a much smaller profit margin.

[http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/aboutacs/financial.h...](http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/about/aboutacs/financial.html)

The smaller American Physical Society made <$100,000 on $53.5m gross revenue
in 2015:

[http://www.aps.org/about/governance/annual-
reports/](http://www.aps.org/about/governance/annual-reports/)

So yes, it is possible to have high quality publications produced on much
smaller margins. The question is whether it is possible to provide similar
services for similar margins in a _for-profit_ context. Given that for-profit
companies, by definition, seek to extract the highest possible profits on what
they do, one should really question whether it makes any sense for for-profit
publishers to have the stranglehold they have on academic intellectual
property.

~~~
ikeboy
Why does the logic of "taxpayer funded research should be free" suddenly
change when the publisher is a non profit? If that logic is valid, why is the
$500 million fine?

I should probably have said "similar charges" as I said later. Reducing the
margins to nothing can at best reduce the cost by 30% or so, which I doubt
would satisfy most open access advocates; given that, the real concern has
nothing to do with publishers' profit.

------
joering2
... meanwhile Wired told me "The thing about AdBlock..." and prevent me from
reading this "free" article.

Funny thing - I don't even have AdBlock.

~~~
vic-traill
I expect there are a number of observable events or non-events that can be
used to infer the use of an ad blocker. They don't necessarily work well ...

I've been presented with a "We see you're using an ad blocker ... please turn
it off" message (I can't recall where, perhaps Bloomberg or the WSJ?) when
I've just had a Hosts file in play.

------
dahart
I agree that publicly funded research should be publicly available, and that
for-profit publishers have an entrenched commercial interest that feeds on
free access to research.

But it's worth keeping in mind that the value of public funding for research
is primarily for the participants, not for the output to the public. Public
research funding is an _education_ model that occasionally has the nice
byproduct of useful results. I got a Master's degree on public funding, I've
published papers in prominent journals in my field, and I'm pretty sure nobody
would read my papers if they had them for free. The real value of the public
dollars spent on me was my education.

I'm not saying research shouldn't be publicly available. It should. I am
saying there are other ways we're getting our money's worth out of research
funding.

A print publication with a distribution channel has been historically
important. Universities don't want to be in the business of printing &
distributing. Many journals also put on conferences. The need for print &
distribution is the reason publishers got entrenched, but it's changing as the
importance of print declines.

I do wonder if the real crime by publishers isn't locking research away from
the public, but charging universities for journals, effectively using public
dollars to buy the research that was publicly funded.

* edited. removed points I regret & speculate were being downvoted.

~~~
themartorana
It's not about who _would_ read your work, but who _can_. I don't read much
the FBI/NSA/rest of government produces but I'm pretty frustrated every time
the suggestion of exempting troves of content from the FOIA comes up.

I also know that my access guarantees other researches access to the same
content, meaning the research that they do, that may one day benefit me down
the road, has had free access to all of the knowledge available to make the
best play at their own research.

It's scary to me that scientific knowledge can be locked away. I am the kind
of person that believes all pharmaceutical research should be freely published
and publicly available as well. Patents provide all the monopoly protections
necessary, and sunlight helps disinfect bogus science that sometimes leads to
death in the pursuit of profits.

~~~
dahart
I agree with you, and I have the very same concerns, but you're talking about
two different kinds of _can_. Government info that is FOIA exempt is not
available for purchase.

You _can_ purchase most research, that is a kind of access. And if you're at a
university doing research, chances are you already have access without paying
personally.

The knowledge we're talking about in this thread isn't being locked away, it's
being charged for. I'm with you, and I don't like it, but we can't claim
there's no access.

~~~
themartorana
That's not access for all. Locking information behind a paywall is limited
access no matter how you spin it, whether someone can't afford to access
information (individually or at scale) or said access isn't sponsored for
them.

------
sremani
Reputation and Credential-ism, right or wrong are the pillars of Academic
Science. Unless we address some of these aspects, it will provide you with
copious amounts of "recreational outrage".

------
chris_wot
Can someone get rid of the "?mbid=social_twitter" on this article? it's
jumping folks to the middle of the article, quite unnecessarily.

------
lutusp
Here's the thing with Wired:

[http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png](http://i.imgur.com/ONOt88S.png)

Fight Internet coercion -- boycott Wired. Don't link to their articles, don't
visit their site, don't accept their coercive behavior. Ad blocking is not a
crime, it's a right.

------
jcizzle
By this notion, I should get free tickets to all college football games. And
my driver's license registration should also be free, don't my taxes already
go to paying for the DMV? Wait, should anything that is even remotely funded
by taxpayer dollars now be free for everyone that pays taxes?

~~~
HillRat
It's more like a private company has bought the only access road to a public
park and is now charging you to get there.

~~~
p4bl0
> It's more like a private company has _privatized at no expenses_ the only
> access road to a public park and is now charging you to get there.

FTFY.

------
darkinvisible
Narrowing it a bit, how about paying to read research I WROTE? I tried to
access a paper of mine I didn't have handy and sure enough the fee was $35.
Turned to sci-hub, of course. I pirated myself. --Anonymous, just in case

------
Overtonwindow
I think the article is oversimplifying the issue. This isn't about access, who
reads it, or who pays for the research, it's about greed. Plain and simple.
Corporations are making money off of the restricting of access to scientific
research, and they are fighting to preserve that business model.

~~~
ikeboy
> oversimplifying the issue

>Plain and simple

Huh?

------
grondilu
But if scientific papers were free, how could nations avoid a free-rider issue
regarding other nations?

For instance, a major part of scientific research is done in US, isn't it?
Does that mean that the US tax payer should be the major contributor to an
hypothetical worldwide scientific activity?

~~~
merraksh
_For instance, a major part of scientific research is done in US, isn 't it?_

A good part, roughly on par with Europe, Japan, Russia, and China (number of
papers is hardly a measure of scientific production anyway):

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/20k5dk/top...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/20k5dk/top_40_countries_by_the_number_of_scientific)

 _Does that mean that the US tax payer should be the major contributor to an
hypothetical worldwide scientific activity?_

All tax payers on this planet (at least those living in a country with
sizeable research spending) already contribute to the worldwide scientific
knowledge. I believe this is a good thing.

[edit: typo]

~~~
grondilu
> All tax payers on this planet (at least those living in a country with
> sizeable research spending) already contribute to the worldwide scientific
> knowledge. I believe this is a good thing.

Then you still get a free-rider problem, regarding all people that did not pay
taxes for this research. You can ignore the issue but tax payers may not.

~~~
merraksh
Agreed, but all taxpayers fund only a portion of the worldwide research and
benefit from _all_ of it, so the trade-off is still in favor of sharing.

------
ikeboy
>Publishers acquire this research free of charge

Except of course they don't. They provide publishing services, which cost them
between 60-80% of the revenue each paper bring in (based on profit margins
between 20-40%). Authors sign over their copyright in exchange for this
consideration. (If they didn't get anything, the copyright assignment wouldn't
be valid.)

> leading journals have stepped forward to make new findings free to all.

By charging authors upfront.

>Publishers do add value, but that value doesn’t justify the cost or the lost
opportunities for those who can’t (or can’t fully) access the research.

This doesn't make sense. "Groceries do add value, but that doesn't justify the
cost or lost opportunities for those that can't afford food".

The solution to people not being able to access essentials is not outlawing
anyone charging for it. It's subsidizing the cost for everyone to buy it, or
making a government-run version that provides it for free. If you want
everyone to be able to eat, you give them food stamps (or make sure they have
enough money by raising the minimum wage, whatever), don't get upset at
companies that provide value but also make a profit. If you can do it for
less, go ahead.

~~~
p4bl0
Have you ever published a paper in an academic venue?

What publishers offered was delivering paper versions of articles to your
local research library. Now they only host PDFs online. Apart from that their
added-value work is negligible. The biggest improvement I've seen by a
publisher of one of my papers was changing "Sec." to "Sect." when I was
referencing section, and putting page number in blue rather than black (true
story).

Anyway nowadays when a paper is accessible directly from a public repository,
it is that version which will be used most often, and it includes literally
zero work from the publisher.

All the real work is done by the authors, and by the reviewers, who are other
researchers doing their normal job (i.e., they're not paid specifically to
review papers, and more importantly not paid by publishers).

The only thing that publishers provide is reputation/prestige, and that's only
because of inertia, and it's difficult to change because they own the titles
of journals they publish. That's one of the numerous reasons why bibliometrics
is an entirely bad idea and is counter-productive for science.

Also, not all open access journal are charging author, that is a lie installed
by publishers lobbying (and this is how they actually spend money). You can
research "diamond open access" or "overlay journal" for some examples of
economical models where journal are high quality, open access and free to
submit to.

~~~
ikeboy
>Also, not all open access journal are charging author, that is a lie
installed by publishers lobbying (and this is how they actually spend money).
You can research "diamond open access" or "overlay journal" for some examples
of economical models where journal are high quality, open access and free to
submit to.

Those all seem to be sponsored. That won't scale to every paper unless some
large organization funds it. The biggest open access journals all charge.

> it includes literally zero work from the publisher.

As long as their expenses are >60% of revenue, I find this hard to believe. If
you think they're wasteful, you can run your own and try to spend less, but
denying their costs won't convince me.

>The only thing that publishers provide is reputation/prestige

Like I said, this model doesn't fit with the numbers we have about their
margins. I'd at least expect over 50% profit margin if they were merely
extracting rent, and probably closer to 90%.

~~~
ufo
Its hard to answer your argument directly because publishers like Elsevier
never publish transparent accounting numbers. For all we know, their costs
could mostly be "Hollywood Accounting". (not to mention, the profit they do
report is already through the roof).

It all does strike me as obviously inefficient though. In my day to day
research as a grad student I almost never benefit from work the publishers
did. I don't even use them to download my papers because the paywalls are so
annoying that I usually go directly to the author's home page (google scholar
will even find these for you). Every half-decent CS researcher makes their
work available on their personal website, at no cost,

In the end, what I am trying to say is that I don't trust Elsevier's reported
expenses and that even if I did I think a huge chunk of them would be
something that could be drastically reduced with a bit of technology.

~~~
ikeboy
>It all does strike obviously inefficient though. In my day to day research I
almost never benefit from work the publishers did. I don't even use them to
download my papers because the paywalls are so annoying that I usually go
directly to the author's home page (google scholar will even find these for
you). Every half-decent CS researcher makes their work available on their
personal website, at no cost,

Different fields have different needs. You don't need too much trust in CS or
math, because you can just evaluate the arguments and proof. But other fields
require much more, and you do benefit from the work they did in only showing
you certain papers and not others.

~~~
ufo
In all fields, the peer review process is performed by volunteer researches at
no cost. The publisher DOES NOT evaluate arguments or ensure that the contents
of the paper are correct. The only thing the publisher does is own the name of
the prestigious journal.

~~~
ikeboy
If that's the case, why do people give them prestige and won't give a new
startup journal prestige?

Why is it considered hard to get into those journals, when all you need to do
is have a correct paper?

~~~
ufo
> Why is it considered hard to get into those journals

Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter of
submitting a good enough paper.

Dunno why this is the case for journals but when it comes to conferences
(where lots of CS research is published) there are obvious time limits
regarding the number of presentations that can be accepted.

> why do people give them prestige and won't give a new startup journal
> prestige?

For historical reasons and perverse incentives, sadly. Young researchers
cannot afford to publish on new startup journals because advancing your carrer
depends on publishing in prestigeous journals (universities evaluate
researchers based on the prestige of where they publish). Meanwhile, tenured
professors are under less pressure when it comes to career advancement but
they also need to publish on prestigeous journals to secure grant money to
fund their labs and to accomodate for their younger co-authors (who are still
trying to advance their carrers).

It also doesn't help when the "journal prestige categorization" is defined by
the government, as happens in my country[1]. Not only are our journal ratings
always outdated (punishing startup journals and conferences) but they also
emphasize publishing in journals over publishing in conferences (which is
terrible for CS research in particular)

[1] [http://qualis.capes.gov.br/](http://qualis.capes.gov.br/)

~~~
ikeboy
>Journals only publish so many papers in a given time. Its not just a matter
of submitting a good enough paper.

And how does that happen without any staff evaluating papers, as you claimed
above?

~~~
p4bl0
Could you stop faking to be an idiot, please? We already responded to that
question and you know it.

~~~
ikeboy
ufo claimed above that "The only thing the publisher does is own the name of
the prestigious journal."

This is false. Why is calling them on it now "faking to be an idiot"?

I pointed out that there's curation, and that imposes costs. Denying that it
exists doesn't help.

~~~
p4bl0
Pfffffff.

Once again: the curation is not performed by the publisher, but by the
editorial board and the reviewers, who are researchers, and are not paid by
the publishers for this work.

~~~
ikeboy
A cursory google search turns up plenty of counterexamples.

See [http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2012/06/14/recruiting-
a-j...](http://blog.journals.cambridge.org/2012/06/14/recruiting-a-journal-
editor-an-hss-challenge/) and
[http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/02/editorial-
boards-s...](http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2002/02/editorial-boards-step-
academic-career-ladder)

I'll note that even PLOS medicine wasn't able to get editors for free, as an
open access journal [http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/competing-
interests-...](http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/competing-interests-of-
the-plos-medicine-editors)

~~~
p4bl0
Paid academic journal editors are rare exceptions.

From one of your own links:

    
    
        Carol Barnes, professor of psychology and neurology at the
        University of Arizona in Tucson, is a reviewing editor at
        the Journal of Neuroscience, a 3-year appointment for which
        *she receives no compensation*.
        (…)
        Barnes has received funding from the university to hire an
        assistant to provide clerical support to assist her with
        the manuscript review process. She considers herself
        fortunate, because "without this help, I would have had to
        decline this position."
    

Not only she was still paid by the university for whats seems to be a full
time job during 3 years according to the article, but in addition to that the
university, not the publisher, paid for an assistant to this job!

~~~
ikeboy
That journal appears to be owned by a non profit.

~~~
p4bl0
And I can assure you that the situation is similar with journals owned by
Wiley, Springer, and Elsevier, for examples.

