----- Original Message -----
From: Prof. Tom Wilson <t.d.wilson_at_sheffield.ac.uk>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 1999 1:32 PM
Subject: Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review)
> I totally agree with the last point - but I wonder if high
> submission, high cost journals are the norm? I referee regularly for
> five or six journals and in all cases the papers for review come
> directly from the editor rather than from the publisher, so I suspect
> that for many journals (and, given a probable Bradford/Zipf
> distribution for submissions to journals, those with thousands of
> submissions must be a very small minority) it is the editor's
> institution that is bearing the cost rather than the publisher - so,
> once again, academia is subsidising the publisher and perhaps this,
> rather than the $300 a paper for the JHEP is the norm. The case of
> scientific societies is rather different, since they often make the
> journals available to their members at rates well below the
> commercial and the whole activity takes the form of scientific
> collaboration.
>
I've been an editor for a commercially-published journal, and I've held
offices, including Treasurer, in a scientific society that has a journal.
In both cases, the cost of the editor's office and his stipend were paid by
the publisher. That is the norm, as far as I know.
For very large journals, the position of editor may be full-time, salaried.
Received on Wed Feb 10 1999 - 19:17:43 GMT