"Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly journal."
Please don't misquote me, Richard. What I said is that a grad student
(in the capacity of assistant/managing editor) is the only person who
needs to be paid specifically for their work on the journal. Of course I
agree that it takes hundreds of scholars to produce an issue, but they
are not paid specifically for that.
You say that "Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the
total expenses for a scholarly journal". Well, I am very curious what
are the costs then? Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are
not paid, so labor is not an issue. Online publishing can be easily
achieved for no cost. You say, as quoted above, that printing and
mailing costs are small. So, what is that money needed for?
Your example of a ''The Journal of American History'' is quite
interesting. I am in fact quite familiar with another book review
journal, the "International Sociology Review of Books". It reviews
several dozen books per year; reviews are done by volunteer scholars,
and the only person getting paid is the (part-time) grad student who
does most of the labor-intensive organizational/record-keeping job. I am
afraid I cannot quote the output number in terms of pages and printed
issues, so let's assume for argument sake that it is about half or a
quarter of the journal you cite. From your example, I am a bit unclear
on who writes the review - the journal staff? Or is their role to select
which books will be reviewed? Review the reviews? Copyediting?
I will now make two assertions.
First, I assume that the model you describe - where journal has
dedicated offices and several full time staff members - form a small
minority of all academic journals. Most academic journals are run with
no dedicated offices, and with no full-time staff members. I would
gladly accept any statistics confirming or rejecting the above.
Second, while I applaud the high quality content produced by such a
journal, I am not convinced that you need all of that (dedicated
offices, dozen or so full time staff) to produce "non-junk" academic
content. It is, IMHO, an illustration of an obsolete business model, one
with too many running costs, as demonstrated by the existence of a free
(open content) alternative. I'd compare this model, in the context of
our group theme here, to the difference between Britannica and
Wikipedia. Britannica relied on offices, full time staff, and was the
model encyclopedia - and than the Internet came and showed us all the
same product can be made in higher quality for next to no cost. For
another example, look at the transformation of the newspaper business,
with numerous papers going under, as the new, Internet-based net news
services are taking over.
I will note, ending, that I am not saying that the open content model is
fully superior. Ideally, a journal should ensure quick turn around
times, and quality control (copy-editing, and so on). I don't have a
perfect solution for all, but what I am pretty sure is that at the very
least, the price charged for most of the traditional journals is
significantly inflated. Whoever funds the journals, should do so fully,
so that their content is free to the reader. I don't know who operates
''The Journal of American History", but at least for many traditional,
big-name publishers, we (tax-payers and scholars) are subsidizing
enormous profits of a small group. For example, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier : "In 2010, Elsevier reported a
profit margin of 36% on revenues of $3.2 billion" Think a moment about
where that money is coming from, and where is it going...
--
Piotr Konieczny
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's
laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski
On 5/22/2012 3:13 PM, Richard Jensen wrote:
There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians
how academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a
scholarly journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of
scholars working together (almost all of whom are paid professional
salaries by universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a
fraction of the total expenses for a scholarly journal, so the
advantage of going electronic is small in terms of production costs.
I talked just now with the editor of --I used to be on its editorial
board. It has dozens of editorial board members and hundreds of unpaid
scholars who evaluate articles and write for it. They are paid not by
the Journal but by their own universities to do this kind of high
prestige "service." (History professors are paid for research,
teaching and service--the average salary in USA for a full professor
of history is $83,000 plus 25% benefits.) The Journal has 14 in-house
staff members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana
University. Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight years
of specialized, expensive post-graduate education. Book reviews are a
main role. They read 3000 new books a year and select the most
important 600 for actual review, using a database of 11,000 available
scholars. 300 full-length manuscripts a year are submitted and the
senior editors and outside reviewers narrow that to the best 10%. The
staffers do intensive quality control on the accepted articles and are
backed by a major university library (which is expensive.) They occupy
nice offices with phones & computers etc that are also paid for. The
Journal pays travel expenses for meetings. The output is 4 issues a
year with 1300 pages of high quality scholarship delivered to about
10,000 historians and libraries.
Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed
and give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there
but the necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to
develop. It costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary
source" that Wikipedia wholly depends upon. The question is who pays
for it.
Richard Jensen
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