People wouldn’t have a problem with an academic journal that they believed charged a reasonable fee. But consider a typical journal published by Springer-Verlag or Mary Thomas Liebert:
Subscription fee: $100 per issue, $1200/year
Cost per article for non-subscribers: $30
Fee paid by the author of each article: about $3000
Advertising fee: I’d guess at least $5,000/page, based on the fact that each full-color page in your article usually adds $1000-$2000 to its cost
Salary paid to reviewers: $0
Cost of electronic publishing: about $100 per issue, divided among all subscribers
They have a problem with having a small number of subscribers. But many hobbyist groups manage to publish quality journals to equally-small audiences at a cost of under $10/issue.
The fact that people aren’t jumping in to compete with lower-costs journals makes me suspect that it isn’t that easy. But it’s still not at all obvious why academic journals cost so much.
(The big ones, Science and Nature, are relatively inexpensive.))
But it’s still not at all obvious why academic journals cost so much.
Sure it is. Subscriptions are mostly paid for by institutions, rather than individuals. Any given article effectively has a monopoly on it’s own content, so once a university has subscribed and the profs are used to getting free access to that content, it’s politically difficult for the university to un-subscribe. Then the journal incrementally increases the prices. Soon, the university’s accounting department is on the losing end of a frog-boil.
Apparently I gave the wrong impression that I was arguing that academic journals are evil.
I actually meant to challenge the idea that an academic institution charging for its services is evil, using academic journals as an example of institutions that currently do so and get away with it. Other examples include text book publishing and undergraduate tuition.
The fact that people aren’t jumping in to compete with lower-costs journals makes me suspect that it isn’t that easy. But it’s still not at all obvious why academic journals cost so much.
Huh? People are most certainly jumping in with zero-cost (to read) journals such as PLoS and others. The open-access publishing movement is not obscure and I’m surprise to see that people here aren’t aware of them.
The reason existing journals cost so much is that publishers can charge monopoly rents based on their ownership of a high-status imprint. That game is not going to last very much longer, IMO.
PLoS is a non-profit, and I’m certainly aware of it. If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
The “impact factor” measure is a part of this; you can’t just start up a new journal and have a high impact factor.
If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
Possible explanations for not seeing that:
There are for-profit startups competing with the big boys, but we just don’t know what they are, because of course they’re smaller and less visible than the big publishers
Startups get bought out by big publishers
Social barriers to entry like the impact factor issue you mention
Social barriers to entry amplified even further because startups are a bunch of entrepreneurs breaking into the field from outside, so they don’t have the same connections as scientists working in the field (less of a problem for big publishers because they can buy existing publishers)
People wouldn’t have a problem with an academic journal that they believed charged a reasonable fee. But consider a typical journal published by Springer-Verlag or Mary Thomas Liebert:
Subscription fee: $100 per issue, $1200/year
Cost per article for non-subscribers: $30
Fee paid by the author of each article: about $3000
Advertising fee: I’d guess at least $5,000/page, based on the fact that each full-color page in your article usually adds $1000-$2000 to its cost
Salary paid to reviewers: $0
Cost of electronic publishing: about $100 per issue, divided among all subscribers
They have a problem with having a small number of subscribers. But many hobbyist groups manage to publish quality journals to equally-small audiences at a cost of under $10/issue.
The fact that people aren’t jumping in to compete with lower-costs journals makes me suspect that it isn’t that easy. But it’s still not at all obvious why academic journals cost so much.
(The big ones, Science and Nature, are relatively inexpensive.))
Sure it is. Subscriptions are mostly paid for by institutions, rather than individuals. Any given article effectively has a monopoly on it’s own content, so once a university has subscribed and the profs are used to getting free access to that content, it’s politically difficult for the university to un-subscribe. Then the journal incrementally increases the prices. Soon, the university’s accounting department is on the losing end of a frog-boil.
I’m stealing this expression.
I’m going to use “frog-boiler” as an insult.
The more widely-accepted term for nondestructive appropriation of creative content is ‘piracy.’
Vocabulary is not creative content.
Vocabulary absolutely can be creative content—boiling something down to a few words is a difficult art.
I would agree with it not being covered by various intellectual property laws.
-- Peter da Silva
We have no disagreement here.
It’s not one I accept. I think it’s a very bad analogy, and refuse to use the word with that meaning.
How about, I’ll use it fairly with attribution where possible
Are you going to let that frog-boiler intimidate you?
I just want to call someone a frog-boiler.
Apparently I gave the wrong impression that I was arguing that academic journals are evil.
I actually meant to challenge the idea that an academic institution charging for its services is evil, using academic journals as an example of institutions that currently do so and get away with it. Other examples include text book publishing and undergraduate tuition.
I assumed that was what you meant; so I explained why I still think academic journals are suspect.
I don’t think either of us has a definition of “evil” that would support argument on this topic anyway.
Huh? People are most certainly jumping in with zero-cost (to read) journals such as PLoS and others. The open-access publishing movement is not obscure and I’m surprise to see that people here aren’t aware of them.
The reason existing journals cost so much is that publishers can charge monopoly rents based on their ownership of a high-status imprint. That game is not going to last very much longer, IMO.
PLoS is a non-profit, and I’m certainly aware of it. If, however, for-profit academic journals charge much more than it costs to produce them, I would expect to see for-profit startups competing with them.
The “impact factor” measure is a part of this; you can’t just start up a new journal and have a high impact factor.
PLoS claims to be sustainable on internally generated revenue at this point. I was just at their conference.
Possible explanations for not seeing that:
There are for-profit startups competing with the big boys, but we just don’t know what they are, because of course they’re smaller and less visible than the big publishers
Startups get bought out by big publishers
Social barriers to entry like the impact factor issue you mention
Social barriers to entry amplified even further because startups are a bunch of entrepreneurs breaking into the field from outside, so they don’t have the same connections as scientists working in the field (less of a problem for big publishers because they can buy existing publishers)