<html><head></head><body>None of this is new. All the studies, one way or the other, show that commercial publishers are making, depending on one's point of view, or the size of your pay check ;), profits.....<br>
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The alternative to the particular case of our friends from the Netherlands is setting up an equal or better publishing method, producing the same effect for the writer, i.e. recognition. Our late lamented friend from the world of citations was never happy that his simplified mathematical device was being used as a method of measuring effectiveness, so, in devising a new, alternative, methodology we should be looking for better measurement tools. <br>
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Anyone here like to propose a solution or solutions? Bearing in mind the need for "recognition"? <br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On June 28, 2017 4:24:21 PM GMT+01:00, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div dir="ltr"><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">On Jun 28, 2017, at 9:57 AM, Andrew Odlyzko <<a href="mailto:odlyzko@umn.edu">odlyzko@umn.edu</a>> wrote:</span><div><br /></div><div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">we could operate an adequate scholarly publishing business, with the current level of peer review, at $300 per article, or 10% what it costs Elsevier. The main obstacle is inertia.</blockquote><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;direction:ltr"><br /></div><blockquote style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style="direction:ltr">"<font face="Verdana, arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px">I think that the true figure for peer-review implementation alone </span></font></div><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style="direction:ltr"><font face="Verdana, arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px">across all refereed journals </span></font><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px;font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">probably averages closer to $200 per article, </span></div><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style="direction:ltr"><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px;font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">or even lower. Hence, quality-control costs account </span><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px;font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">for only 10% of the </span></div><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style="direction:ltr"><span style="font-size:12.960000038146973px;font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif">collective tolls actually being paid per article.” </span></div></blockquote></div><blockquote style="margin:0 0 0 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><blockquote style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div class="gmail-AppleOriginalContents" style=""><i style="font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10.079999923706055px">Nature</i><span style="font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10.079999923706055px"> </span><b style="font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10.079999923706055px">410</b><span style="font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10.079999923706055px">, 1024-1025 (<b>26 April 2001</b>) | </span><span class="gmail-doi" style="font-family:Verdana,arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:10.079999923706055px"><abbr title="Digital Object Identifier">doi</abbr>:10.1038/35074210</span></div></blockquote></div><div><blockquote style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><a href="https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6832/full/4101024a0.html">https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v410/n6832/full/4101024a0.html</a></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><blockquote style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px;margin:0px 0px 0px 40px;border:none;padding:0px"><div><br /></div></blockquote><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">Inertia indeed, on the part of the publishing industry, predictably, but on the part of the </span><span style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px">research community, deplorably…</span><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px"><br /></div><div style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Helvetica;font-size:12px"><b>Stevan Harnad</b></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br /><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Jun 28, 2017 at 9:57 AM, Andrew Odlyzko <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:odlyzko@umn.edu" target="_blank">odlyzko@umn.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br /><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Perhaps a Kazhakstani graduate student can provide simple distribution<br />
of files at a very low cost. But once you get into providing anything<br />
resembling serious curation, and even more when you get into peer review,<br />
costs do mount up. For example, arXiv costs about $10 per preprint<br />
submitted (if we divide the annual cost of the arXiv by the number of<br />
new submissions, and so don't worry about the accounting niceties of<br />
splitting the costs between handling new and old papers). For a few<br />
million papers per year for all of scholarly publishing, this gets<br />
beyond the capability of a Kazhakstani graduate student.<br />
<br />
<br />
This rough estimate of $10 per preprint for arXiv, and others to be quoted,<br />
are all from the paper "Open Access, library and publisher competition, and<br />
the evolution of general commerce," Evaluation Review, vol. 39, no. 1,<br />
Feb. 2015, pp. 130-163,<br />
<br />
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0193841X13514751" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/<wbr />0193841X13514751</a><br />
<br />
and (for those who can't get inside the paywall), a preprint is at<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/libpubcomp.pdf" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~<wbr />odlyzko/doc/libpubcomp.pdf</a><br />
<br />
Going beyond preprint distribution (and the very light level of screening<br />
by volunteer editors, which does exist at arXiv, at no monetary cost),<br />
Elsevier collects about $5,000 in total on average for each article they<br />
publish. About $2,000 is their profit, and the remaining $3,000 covers<br />
what they claim are necessary costs. As many (including your truly) have<br />
been arguing for a couple of decades, the necessity of those costs (leaving<br />
the profit question aside) is extremely questionable, and we now have lots<br />
of examples of lower cost journals. It seems clear (some estimates and<br />
references in the paper cited above) that we could operate an adequate<br />
scholarly publishing business, with the current level of peer review,<br />
at $300 per article, or 10% what it costs Elsevier. The main obstacle<br />
is inertia.<br />
<br />
Andrew<br /></blockquote></div></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br>
-- <br>
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