Comment by pm90
5 hours ago
Is that … a bad thing? I know that peer reviewing takes time (although iirc journals don’t pay reviewers). And there is overhead around publishing which needs to be covered somehow.
5 hours ago
Is that … a bad thing? I know that peer reviewing takes time (although iirc journals don’t pay reviewers). And there is overhead around publishing which needs to be covered somehow.
Academic publishing is _notoriously_ profitable. Authorship and the bulk of the editorial process is done by others for free, and these days you often aren't even creating a physical copy. Their overheads are really pretty minimal. What the money (subscriptions and / or APCs) gets is the kudos associated with the publication.
It is reasonable to say: well if they aren't providing anything of value then the market ought to bypass them. The reality is that the publishers have been very canny in protecting their position, and sharp practice is rife.
They charge a substantial premium for that service. The open access publication fees are typically hundreds or even thousands of dollars per article.
There are other platforms that can offer a similar service for much cheaper, but scientists incentivised to publish on established journals that have a higher impact metrics.
Very bad. APC fees typically are much larger than overhead of publishing and publishers have extreme profit margins.