Coordinating people to write encyclopedias was expensive. Well, until 2001.
2012/9/25 George Herbert <[email protected]> > On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 2:12 PM, Mark <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 9/25/12 12:32 AM, George Herbert wrote: > >> > >> On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:52 PM, Richard Farmbrough > >> <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> > >>> On 24/09/2012 03:49, Risker wrote: > >>>> > >>>> the costs of peer review > >>> > >>> I have academics complaining to me that they don't get paid for peer > >>> review, > >>> so I'm not sure what these costs are. > >> > >> Someone has to edit the magazine, pre-accept papers, and handle the > >> peer reviews. > >> > > > > The actual organization of peer reviews generally isn't paid even at > > for-profit journals, at least in my field. The editor-in-chief and > editorial > > board are usually responsible for finding and assigning reviewers, and > then > > making a decision based on their reviews, and those aren't paid > positions. > > There are indeed editing/layout costs at some journals, though it varies > > widely. In computer science, the costs are typically lower to > nonexistent, > > because of an expectation that authors will be able to deliver > > publication-ready PDFs, using LaTeX and a template provided by the > journal. > > > > The two top journals these days in my field (artificial intelligence) > both > > run on fairly low budgets, one a rounding error away from $0, and the > other > > a modest nonprofit: > > > > * http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ -- donated server space from MIT, and a > > completely volunteer editorial process > > * http://jair.org/ -- nonprofit organization with a small budget > (funded by > > donations and grants) pays for server space and a small staff > > > > -Mark > > Computer Science seems to have taken the lead there, but my > understanding (as an outsider, interested, but not participating much) > is that physical and biological sciences, and most other engineering, > usually pay a staffer and the editor-in-chief, but usually not > reviewers or the editorial board. > > I'm sure it's wildly across the map from field to field and > publication to publication, though... > > The important part of the discussion is to get on the table that there > are real production EFFORTS involved in all of these journals; it's > not just an email balancing act, a large part of people's work time is > dedicated to coordination and reviewing reviews and finding reviewers > and the like. Authors are asked to review. Lots of effort is > happening. > > Whether most of that is "free" - supported by institutions or done by > people out of the goodness of their heart (or for prestige) - or paid, > it's happening. > > If I'm paying $1,000 a year for a journal I darn well expect that > they're both paying the coordination and production staff and also > exercising not academic interference, but having an organizational > review board to make sure the editor and editorial committee aren't > running off the rails (as has been known to happen in lesser known > journals). > > > -- > -george william herbert > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l > -- Emilio J. Rodríguez-Posada. E-mail: emijrp AT gmail DOT com Pre-doctoral student at the University of Cádiz (Spain) Projects: AVBOT <http://code.google.com/p/avbot/> | StatMediaWiki<http://statmediawiki.forja.rediris.es> | WikiEvidens <http://code.google.com/p/wikievidens/> | WikiPapers<http://wikipapers.referata.com> | WikiTeam <http://code.google.com/p/wikiteam/> Personal website: https://sites.google.com/site/emijrp/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l
