• RvTV95XBeo
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    1 year ago

    The challenge is the peer review system - not saying it can’t be done, but facilitating quality reviews is often costly.

    There has, however, been a push to publish articles as “open access” which costs more for the author but makes it publicly available free of charge to read.

    Overall the system is still a pretty big scam, but would be difficult to make 100% free.

    • merc
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      The challenge is the peer review system - not saying it can’t be done, but facilitating quality reviews is often costly.

      What’s the cost? People aren’t paid for peer reviews, right? So, is it just difficult to arrange peer reviews?

        • merc
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          1 year ago

          Which should really be pretty minor.

          • RvTV95XBeo
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            It requires full time technical staff.

            The way I see it, this “free” journal is gonna have some overhead, from servers to maintainers, coordinators, and potentially even designers to help get consistency.

            Some people may be able to support with their free time, but ultimately if those people/systems are going to be paid, the platform will need a revenue stream, and like magic we’re back to square one, albeit with hopefully significantly lower profit margins.

            • merc
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              It requires full time technical staff.

              A few, but doing what? It’s not like they need hundreds of people.

              • RvTV95XBeo
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                For any one journal, very few, maybe even fractions of a headcount per journal, but for the thousands of journals out there spanning dozens of disciplines and hundreds of specialties, it adds up. If you want to make the end-all-be-all magic journal of all-topicness and maintain a respectable level of quality, you’re going to need quite a few SMEs policing the submissions.

                There’s millions of scientific papers published annually - you need people to process all of that information and moderate peer reviews.

                • merc
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  1 year ago

                  but for the thousands of journals out there

                  Ok, but we’re talking about thousands of dollars in fees for a single journal. There’s no reason that a single journal should have costs anywhere near thousands of dollars for a single article.

                  • RvTV95XBeo
                    link
                    fedilink
                    English
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    The average number of articles published per journal per year is ~110. Let’s say a major journal publishes probably closer to 300/yr.

                    Assuming you try and barebones it with 3 staff members, a technical lead for screening, a graphics / visual editor, and a peer review manager. Assume you want someone relatively competent for your journal so you pay each (inclusive of overhead & benefits) ~$150k/yr.

                    $150k/yr × 3 / 300 articles = $1.5k/article

                    Again, not saying it’s a perfect system and things can definitely benefit from economies of scale, but it really doesn’t take much to get $1k/article in expenses to pile up.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      but facilitating quality reviews is often costly.

      States/academic institutions have to make it part of the job description of people. Get designated an editor of a journal? Your Uni understands and hands you an additional TA to lighten the load elsewhere and/or deal with the paperwork aspects.

      The reviewing itself is already done pro bono anyways.