Thanks for the list of production costs; I did not realize all those parts were necessary. Now it makes more sense, though it still seems a bit exaggerated—I mean, $700 just to proofread and convert one DOC file with pictures into XML + JPEG + PDF? That’s a monthly salary of an educated person here in Eastern Europe. Let’s be generous and pretend it is a week’s work of one person. Sure, if you include office space, marketing, etc., then it grows… but why not use volunteer work instead? You could pay volunteers by giving them a free access into database… eh, now I am probably just trying to deny reality. Anyway, even if we succeeded to reduce the four figures to three, it would not change much.
(Now calm down, breathe deeply, and find out why are you not satisfied, even after you got a rational explanation...)
I think this is what makes it all feel so wrong: We live in the age of internet, in the age of blogs, in the age of free software. You can have a web page for $0, or just a bit more if you need a top-level domain. You can have a CMS or blogging software for $0. You already have a personal computer, and you can have a word processor for $0. You can make a PDF file by clicking on the “export to PDF” button, and then clicking “OK”. That’s it!
And then we increase the price by $1000, because we require professional book-level quality for the articles. Because “Times New Roman 10pt” just ain’t good enough for serious science!
I guess this is where the whole process slowly got out of control. Surely, if you do science, you need to publish. If you publish, there are experts that will make your article nice to read, and it is basically a good thing. But these experts are going to cost you something. Either you will pay the costs, or the readers will. … And now we ask scientists to pay for the privilege of publishing their discoveries, and we slow down the scientific progress by thousands of paywalls, just to make sure that the science comes in a nice professional PDF layout.
So, as an alternative (maybe it already exists) I would suggest an online journal that publishes any article exactly as they get it. If it is a PDF, publish the PDF. If it is anything else, do a straightforward export to PDF and publish it along with the original files. Have a team of volunteers willing to polish some of those PDFs for free. Then either let authors pay $20 per submission, or solicit for donations to cover manuscript management costs, or again leave the editorial work to volunteers.
EDIT: Alternatively, let authors choose if they want to pay $1000 for having their article edited (because now we know it is an editing cost) or if they prefer to publish their article as it is. This decision should not influence the journal’s decision whether the article will be published. For example, the editing should be done by external company. Journal’s guardians should not participate in publishing business. Simply, let’s separate “PDF layout” business from “scientific article filtering” business; otherwise we have a conflict of interests here.
Thanks for the list of production costs; I did not realize all those parts were necessary. Now it makes more sense, though it still seems a bit exaggerated—I mean, $700 just to proofread and convert one DOC file with pictures into XML + JPEG + PDF? That’s a monthly salary of an educated person here in Eastern Europe. Let’s be generous and pretend it is a week’s work of one person. Sure, if you include office space, marketing, etc., then it grows… but why not use volunteer work instead? You could pay volunteers by giving them a free access into database… eh, now I am probably just trying to deny reality. Anyway, even if we succeeded to reduce the four figures to three, it would not change much.
(Now calm down, breathe deeply, and find out why are you not satisfied, even after you got a rational explanation...)
I think this is what makes it all feel so wrong: We live in the age of internet, in the age of blogs, in the age of free software. You can have a web page for $0, or just a bit more if you need a top-level domain. You can have a CMS or blogging software for $0. You already have a personal computer, and you can have a word processor for $0. You can make a PDF file by clicking on the “export to PDF” button, and then clicking “OK”. That’s it!
And then we increase the price by $1000, because we require professional book-level quality for the articles. Because “Times New Roman 10pt” just ain’t good enough for serious science!
I guess this is where the whole process slowly got out of control. Surely, if you do science, you need to publish. If you publish, there are experts that will make your article nice to read, and it is basically a good thing. But these experts are going to cost you something. Either you will pay the costs, or the readers will. … And now we ask scientists to pay for the privilege of publishing their discoveries, and we slow down the scientific progress by thousands of paywalls, just to make sure that the science comes in a nice professional PDF layout.
So, as an alternative (maybe it already exists) I would suggest an online journal that publishes any article exactly as they get it. If it is a PDF, publish the PDF. If it is anything else, do a straightforward export to PDF and publish it along with the original files. Have a team of volunteers willing to polish some of those PDFs for free. Then either let authors pay $20 per submission, or solicit for donations to cover manuscript management costs, or again leave the editorial work to volunteers.
EDIT: Alternatively, let authors choose if they want to pay $1000 for having their article edited (because now we know it is an editing cost) or if they prefer to publish their article as it is. This decision should not influence the journal’s decision whether the article will be published. For example, the editing should be done by external company. Journal’s guardians should not participate in publishing business. Simply, let’s separate “PDF layout” business from “scientific article filtering” business; otherwise we have a conflict of interests here.