[Wikimedia-l] (semi-OT) Open access "catastrophic" for Elsevier

[Mark]

On 9/25/12 12:32 AM, George Herbert wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Richard Farmbrough
> <richard at farmbrough.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 24/09/2012 03:49, Risker wrote:
>>> the costs of peer review
>> I have academics complaining to me that they don't get paid for peer review,
>> so I'm not sure what these costs are.
> Someone has to edit the magazine, pre-accept papers, and handle the
> peer reviews.
>

The actual organization of peer reviews generally isn't paid even at 
for-profit journals, at least in my field. The editor-in-chief and 
editorial board are usually responsible for finding and assigning 
reviewers, and then making a decision based on their reviews, and those 
aren't paid positions. There are indeed editing/layout costs at some 
journals, though it varies widely. In computer science, the costs are 
typically lower to nonexistent, because of an expectation that authors 
will be able to deliver publication-ready PDFs, using LaTeX and a 
template provided by the journal.

The two top journals these days in my field (artificial intelligence) 
both run on fairly low budgets, one a rounding error away from $0, and 
the other a modest nonprofit:

* http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ -- donated server space from MIT, and a 
completely volunteer editorial process
* http://jair.org/ -- nonprofit organization with a small budget (funded 
by donations and grants) pays for server space and a small staff

-Mark