Programme on publishing
Posted: June 13 2005
Not sure which section to put this in, but anyway.
I found this radio programme quite thought provoking: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/pub ... mned.shtml
Not sure I agree with all of it but it gets more interesting towards the end, talking about the cost of journals to libraries (~100 pounds per issue). Explains a bit about some new journals which charge the authors per paper (~800 pounds) and then the papers are free for anyone in the world to look at.
How can it cost this much to publish papers in journals? We don't need typesetting (what appears on the arxiv always looks fine to me). We don't get paid to referee them. We basically need someone to assign referees to papers and deal with any arguments before checking a box saying "yes this has been accepted". I suppose the editors do this - do editors get paid so very much?
The programme mentions the open archives (e.g. arxiv) and says that, surprisingly, journal subscriptions have not been affected by ~95 per cent of the articles being available on the arxivs.
I don't really understand this though. I have to admit, I almost always get papers from arxiv rather than getting the journal version through ADS and the university subscriptions. Many journals are free to publish in, we get the benefit of having the peer review stamp on our cvs, and then we download the papers for free from arxiv.
So why bother subscribing to journals?
I found this radio programme quite thought provoking: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/pub ... mned.shtml
Not sure I agree with all of it but it gets more interesting towards the end, talking about the cost of journals to libraries (~100 pounds per issue). Explains a bit about some new journals which charge the authors per paper (~800 pounds) and then the papers are free for anyone in the world to look at.
How can it cost this much to publish papers in journals? We don't need typesetting (what appears on the arxiv always looks fine to me). We don't get paid to referee them. We basically need someone to assign referees to papers and deal with any arguments before checking a box saying "yes this has been accepted". I suppose the editors do this - do editors get paid so very much?
The programme mentions the open archives (e.g. arxiv) and says that, surprisingly, journal subscriptions have not been affected by ~95 per cent of the articles being available on the arxivs.
I don't really understand this though. I have to admit, I almost always get papers from arxiv rather than getting the journal version through ADS and the university subscriptions. Many journals are free to publish in, we get the benefit of having the peer review stamp on our cvs, and then we download the papers for free from arxiv.
So why bother subscribing to journals?