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

[emijrp]

Coordinating people to write encyclopedias was expensive. Well, until 2001.

2012/9/25 George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>

> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Mark <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > 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
>
> Computer Science seems to have taken the lead there, but my
> understanding (as an outsider, interested, but not participating much)
> is that physical and biological sciences, and most other engineering,
> usually pay a staffer and the editor-in-chief, but usually not
> reviewers or the editorial board.
>
> I'm sure it's wildly across the map from field to field and
> publication to publication, though...
>
> The important part of the discussion is to get on the table that there
> are real production EFFORTS involved in all of these journals; it's
> not just an email balancing act, a large part of people's work time is
> dedicated to coordination and reviewing reviews and finding reviewers
> and the like.  Authors are asked to review.  Lots of effort is
> happening.
>
> Whether most of that is "free" - supported by institutions or done by
> people out of the goodness of their heart (or for prestige) - or paid,
> it's happening.
>
> If I'm paying $1,000 a year for a journal I darn well expect that
> they're both paying the coordination and production staff and also
> exercising not academic interference, but having an organizational
> review board to make sure the editor and editorial committee aren't
> running off the rails (as has been known to happen in lesser known
> journals).
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
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-- 
Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com
Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain)
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