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Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

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Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#181

Post by ta988 »

cossatot wrote: post #42
tomrod wrote: post #9

What in the world? I have a hard time seeing this as anything but a racket, or possibly a legal maneuver to increase standing to sue Sci-Hub or something ("Look, we've offered free access already!") How much did Nature Neuroscience pay to produce these articles? Do they pay their editors? Their reviewers? The authors? Do they pay their typesetters? Do they offer their print journal for free? Do they have expensive co…

Nature pays their editors, unlike most society journals. But they are a for-profit business, and are clearly just looking for more profit. The expected lifetime value of any article in Nature Neuroscience for the authors is well above $11,390, as that is probably 1% of the typical grant that will produce the article, and getting published in this venue makes it much easier to continue to get grants funded, to get top…

This is not true most grants do not allow for OA money or you have to take it from other lines (salaries, equipment...) and deal with that internally. But in the end it is taken from your research fund, the university is also taking a portion of the grants as indirect costs and a part of those pay for the yearly increasing secret library contracts (they are confidential you can't even get them with a FOIA). So in the end paying OA to large publishers, you are paying them twice.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#182

Post by ta988 »

cheonic8492 wrote: post #127
lultimouomo wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The expected lifetime value of any article in Nature Neuroscience for the authors is well above $11,390 This. Authors are the customers of the journals; the service they are buying is a push towards tenure and more funding. This has been true for a long time; open access only makes it more explicit. When readers are the ones paying, you can argue that they are paying the journal so that it makes sure that they are…

> I think journals are now in a situation similar to the one of rating agencies and accounting firms. I don't think it will work out very well. Students aren’t paying for college, the government is. The researchers aren’t paying Nature, the government is.

Not sure why you are downvoted, most colleges, at least in US, have more money coming from research, industrial partners and clinics than tuition.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#183

Post by ta988 »

kragen wrote: post #60
robwwilliams wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: Are we sure this is a mandatory charge or just the charge if the authors must publish an immediate open access article. I just published in Nature Metabolism and there was no charge at all. The quality of the review and editing was EXTRAORDINARY! I wanted to thank all of the reviewers for doing a superb job. Had I required immediate open access then it would have cost! But with both full versions in bioRxiv and…

Were the reviewers paid?

Never. I've reviewed for over 30 journals from low to high quality and you don't get a dime. And sometimes get the editor hinting you what they want you to say.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#184

Post by ta988 »

jkhdigital wrote: post #158
einpoklum wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 11000 is the paycheck of a Phd student in southern europe, A Ph.D. candidate (don't call them students please, they're researchers more than students) in southern Europe does _not_ get 11,000 USD / month. Something between 2,000 and 4,500 AFAICT.

As an aside, apparently there is a technical difference between “candidate” and “student”. A PhD candidate is one who has passed the qualifying exam, which occurs 2-3 years into the process. This usually coincides with the point at which all required coursework is complete, so “student” is probably a suitable label during that initial period.

This is not how it works in most parts of Europe.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#185

Post by netr0ute »

dash2 wrote: post #142
kristopolous wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two things. The person walks away after this $600 poorer. We've found ways to do things of arguably far less social value then say, a new medical discovery, such as stand up comedy or say a club dj without them having to fork over $600 to do what they're being advertised for. In fact, they actually get paid. Second, the enterprise for expanding human knowledge shouldn't come with a door fee, full stop. If we want to…

It’s not a good analogy. Gigs and stand-up comedy have big audiences. Academic conferences don’t. Hiring a venue, paying for dinner, these things have cost. $600 isn’t unreasonable. By contrast $12,000 to publish a PDF on a website is criminal.

> Academic conferences don’t.

Untrue, as shown by there being a conference in the first place.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#186

Post by throwaway2037 »

kanaffa12345 wrote: post #35
Brian-Puccio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a sample size of one, go ahead and ask them: https://twitter.com/hwitteman/status/1015049411276300289

how ironic that her blog post on how to access paywalled articles is currently "Access Denied" https://holly.witteman.ca/index.php/2017/12/11/getting-acces...

I sent her an email about it. I hope she can fix it. :)

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#187

Post by kragen »

ta988 wrote: post #183
kragen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were the reviewers paid?

Never. I've reviewed for over 30 journals from low to high quality and you don't get a dime. And sometimes get the editor hinting you what they want you to say.

I'm thinking that if Nature didn't pay the reviewers then the quality of the reviewing probably is not a result of money flowing into Nature, whether from the authors or from the readers?

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#188

Post by ta988 »

kragen wrote: post #187
ta988 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never. I've reviewed for over 30 journals from low to high quality and you don't get a dime. And sometimes get the editor hinting you what they want you to say.

I'm thinking that if Nature didn't pay the reviewers then the quality of the reviewing probably is not a result of money flowing into Nature, whether from the authors or from the readers?

You have some incentives to review. In the US they are a factor to get visas and green cards. They are used for getting tenure in some places. It is also a way to get in the "club" because now the editor that revuews grants nows your name...

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#189

Post by blagie »

ta988 wrote: post #180
blagie wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs are exaggerated. For example, it is not possible to replicably develop that software infrastructure for $50k. It is possible as a one-off if you're an engineer working on your own project, but for example, a biology journal couldn't drop $50k on that infrastructure. A lot of these things rely on individual heroics. I appreciate heroics, but they don't scale to an industry. I'm glad for the good work they're…

Publication and diffusion software can be Free there are a lot of options. Often university libraries even provide them with support for you.

They're free only if sysadmin time is free. It's the same rabbit hole. In practice, maintaining, supporting, and running a server, especially with archival-grade backups and retention -- is gonna require more than $50k (let alone $5k) of human time each year. You can't pretend there is no cost or that the cost is an order-of-magnitude lower than it is. At that point, you end up with solutions which can't work.

Many people would gladly donate a megabuck a year if a significant portion of science went open as a result. People won't do that if you pretend the annual costs are $5k. Likewise, university libraries fielding that cost is a good solution -- and far cheaper than journals -- but it won't work if you pretend the cost figure is lower than it is.

Re: Nature Neuroscience offers open access publishing for $11k per article

#190

Post by semi-extrinsic »

ta988 wrote: post #179
AmazThrowAway wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not all! In fact lots of people, to my surprise, are publishing in Nature: Machine Intelligence

Because they can brag annd say "I published in Nature". I've seen that so often, same thing with the various "Science something" journals that get transformed as "In my Science article..."

The best is the borderline-predatory journal called "Journal of Nature and Science".

"My track record includes numerous publications in Nature and Science."

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