Christoph - it looks to me like you have this scenario carefully covered. Of course, best to avoid any situation that is potentially illegal or unethical. Thta doesn't leave you with many options then beyond the ones that you have already mentioned. One other, that I have used, is 'consultancy funds'. Many universities allow you to 'bank' external payments for consultancy-type activities with other stakeholders. That said, some universities will have strict rules for what that money can be used for. I've mainly used such money for conference fees/trips etc - but, with covid, most of these are virtual now - and open access publishing fees would be a good alternative - if your institution allows that.

This is not an answer, just a rant:

The fact that many scientists (including those with substantial power over the careers of others) often judge the quality of work largely based on their personal perceptions of the journals that published said work is a fundamental problem in how science and scientists are currently appraised. Subjective impressions of author and/or journal prestige should never factor into the assessment of scientific work; the very worst papers that I have ever reviewed have been for "high-tier" journals (e.g. Brain) and have come from "prestigious" research groups. These have also been the groups that were most resistant to requested revisions.

One major root of this problem is scientific publishing companies themselves.

I cannot see them as anything other than parasites that have thoroughly infiltrated academic science and made themselves central to how scientific works (and scientists) are perceived and evaluated, despite the arguable fact that they contribute little-to-nothing of value to the work itself (other than copy-editing and web-hosting). I find it infuriating that I get paid a flat, taxpayer-funded salary (that is much less than my market value outside of academia) on a short-term contract to perform highly skilled technical labor (i.e. experiments, analyses, etc.) and produce high-quality media content (i.e. scientific papers), which I then either:

(1) give to a massive and highly profitable publisher for free so that a (probably unpaid) editor can recruit (via e-mail) unpaid reviewers (that I often must suggest and provide contact information for myself) to curate the content before the publisher accepts it (or rejects it), makes some formatting changes, slaps their branding on it, hosts it on the internet, and then sells it back to the authors, reviewers, and all of the other taxpayer-funded content creators/curators at extremely high profit margins,

or

(2) pay several thousand tax-payer dollars to a massive and highly profitable publisher so that the publisher can do basically the same thing with the exception that instead of selling the final product back to everyone involved in its creation/curation after acceptance/copy-editing, the publisher posts the final version on an open-access online repository that differs minimally from institutional repositories or pre-print servers that don't cost ~$3000.00 to host a paper (they're free).

In either case, the final product is likely to differ only superficially from the version that I posted (for free) on a pre-print server or here on RG.

The knowledge that the primary entities that tangibly benefit from my taxpayer-funded labor are...for-profit publishing companies that obtain their content for free (or are PAID to receive the content), have it edited and curated for free, and then sell it at ridiculous margins (or were paid ridiculous margins to put their branding on it) back to the people who actually created it, along with the knowledge that many scientists either don't realize or don't care that journals are essentially ALL predatory 3rd-party profit-generation-machines that contribute significantly to many of the problems with how science/scientists are evaluated, how studies are done/reported, and what scientists prioritize in their work (e.g. clean seemingly simple results with nice stories and methods online only), legitimately makes me want to leave science altogether. I truly, deeply hate the research culture that has been built by previous generations, with scientific publishing being culprit #1 (culprit #2 being the fundamentally exploitative nature of post-graduate academic research positions such as post-docs).

You are definitely important enough to publish in HI journals, so just do it and pay the fees. You won't regret it and you won't miss the money in the end :)

Dear Christoph Sperber ,

Interesting question you ask here, it all sounds a bit strange and seems to contradicts with the ‘ultimate goal’ of the European vision and support for open access publishing: https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/strategy/goals-research-and-innovation-policy/open-science/open-access_en

I was under the impression that researchers in Universities have full funding for open access publishing since it is nowadays more or less a prerequisite. In the Netherlands it is described in detail:

https://www.nwo.nl/en/open-access-publishing

Here you read things like: “Costs of open access publishing should be included in the budget of the project proposal. By using the budget module for 'material costs'.” Sounds good right.

But apparently not unlimited:” Note: Since 2015 NWO only reimburses the costs for publishing in full gold Open Access journals (registered in DOAJ). Article Processing Charges (APC’s) for publication in hybrid journals will not be reimbursed.” Sounds problematic…

However, they also state: “Hybrid: … VSNU has agreements with many of the major publishers that enable researchers to do so at no extra cost.” and “The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) has concluded Open Access agreements with a large number of scholarly publishers. With these so-called transformative agreements corresponding academic authors affiliated with Dutch universities can publish their articles in Open Access in more than 11.000 journals, free of charge.”

Indeed, it all looks nice in theory (By the way, I could not find a limitation in the APC like the 2000 euro as used in Germany that is covered by funding). However I saw things like: there are limitations in the number of publications which can be published at a particular publisher (which of course differ for every publisher…), not all journals fall under these type of agreements and so and so. In other words, quite a bureaucratic system around this issue.

Indeed, your case indicates that there is quite a gap between the ‘ideal’ to have all tax-payed research in open access publishing to make all research publicly available and the financial support to do this. The policy of governments and how it works in the real world are quite often two different things…

As you said yourself in your case I sense an unwillingness to ‘get around’ all this in a creative way by your supervisor, in the occasion that you happen to have a potential high impact manuscript that has a good change to be published in let say Nature Communications there must be a way to ‘just’ cover the cost for you either by material costs or travel expenses or something. Not much can be done about that I am afraid.

Best regards.

Dear Rob Keller,

thanks for you answer. I am - at least in parts - aware of the programmes and their aims. I definitely agree with everybody who aims to make science more accessible, not only to funders - taxpayers in my country - but to everybody.

However, as already touched by your comment, there is quite a gap between the ambitious programmes and a researcher's reality.

When I submitted my last paper to Human Brain Mapping, the journal was just transitioning from subscription to OA. According to its homepage, fees should be waived for my paper as it was submitted before the deadline for introduction of OA fees.

Still, somebody from HBM informed my library that they need to pay in case of acception. Somebody else, also from the journal, confirmed that I do not have pay. I stood surety with my private money and was lucky that the fee was indeed waived in the end.

Today, with the German Wiley Deal, we researchers do not have to pay the fees anymore, because the libraries do so. However, my library just forwards the costs back to the reseachers. Of course, I can't complain to Wiley, because, according to Deal, I do not have to pay anymore, because the libraries do so.

My point: funding schemes are as kafkaesque as they can be, and nobody, not even the journals, really know what the programmes and deals really mean. Responsibility is passed on, and in the end I spend more time reading guidelines and writing emails than doing research. Menawhile, I do so without success, and it looks like I am locked out of roughly 50% of all journals that I previously published in.

Dear Christoph Sperber

I think the situation you describe is absurd. Paying abusive fees to publish knowledge is absurd. This vicious cycle that major publishers classify their journals and then charge high fees for the publication, this process is very unethical. If nobody published in these journals, they would be closed.

There are excellent open and free tax journals.

Honestly, publish in an open and free tax journal.

Best regards.

To answer your two questions, I handle this situation by staying away from these journals. I do not support journals that charge an APC fee to authors. There are many excellent, international journals indexed in Scopus and WOS that do not charge APC fees. I suggest you review the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php), where you will find some of the main journals on your field organized by quartiles. Since all the journals included on this list must meet a series of quality criteria, they can be considered among the best. The assertions included in your discussion: "to pay for impact" and "to include the department head as a co-author in some common, but shady agreement so that the department pays for it," are unethical, at the very least, no matter how common or frequent they might be. The article "How Prestige Journals Remain Elite, Exclusive and Exclusionary" by Madhukar Pai (https://www.forbes.com/sites/madhukarpai/2020/11/30/how-prestige-journals-remain-elite-exclusive-and-exclusionary/?sh=5f930d894d48) published on November 30, 2020 addresses this issue. It is imperative to start rejecting the "pay for publishing" model in the scholarly realm. One way to do this is to not sponsor the publications that have manufactured their supposed "impact," by dint of money, at the expense of authors, readers, and institutions. I always urge my colleagues to support true open science, which makes knowledge freely available to all, for the benefit of everyone (rather than for the benefit of a few publishers).

Dear Ángel Carrión-Tavárez , dear Paulo Laerte Natti ,

thanks for your comments, and also for the link to the great article by Madhukar Pai!

Very likely, I won't have any choice but to not publish in these expensive journals. What bothers me is that I am de facto locked out of the leading journals in my field, while comments suggest that I have to react to the situation.

I'm an irrelavant, underpaid young researcher struggling to make ends meet, and the system will not change because of my publication strategy. My career, on the other hand, will change for the worse.

At the same time, there are scientists so powerful that they could team up to kill a whole journal over the course of a single tuesday afternoon. Many of them also scientists that peer-review my grant proposals and likely not appreciate my efforts put into searching reasonably priced journals on Scimago.

Interesting question Christoph Sperber . Would be interested to know as well.

Great discussion so far Christoph Sperber All young researchers should be aware/know this matter from the questions and answers of this discussion. Thanks to your great replies Joseph Griffis @Ángel Carrión-Tavárez

great discussion - joseph, you've managed to articulate my feelings on the matter better than i ever could. thank you! i feel a lot of early career researchers would agree with you.

ben

Great discussion

Joseph Griffis just nailed it. Academia today is very sick, and as expected there are some fat cats profiting heavily from this sickness. Just as is the case with our societies these days, thinking of which.

Christoph Sperber I would just counsel you not to pay those publication fees from your own, personal money. Just never do it, no matter the narrative.

You can ask the editorial office for a waiver for part of the fee so that you can bridge the gap with the OA funding.

I suggest do not publish with them.

Dear Christoph Sperber

Sad but nice quote:

"We do not need to pretend that we only judge scientific works after reading them, but in fact, quite much by the journal they were published in."

anyway,

I want to take a step back,

After all these years, I still do not understand why a series of researchers with a wealth of experience prepare a valuable article, and it is the journal that sells this article!! And researchers have no share in this revenue!

How did researchers and journals come to this unfair agreement from the beginning?

Gustavo Hassemer , Paulo Laerte Natti

Dear Mehran Shahpari

I think this situation (scientists not profiting from their discoveries) has always been the norm, not an exception. Historically, scientists normally were rich people who would conduct research for their leisure, only more recently occurred the appearance of the "profissional" scientist. Still, modern scientists as a rule are not directly paid for their discoveries, and so many (including myself) effectively do research as a "hobby", for not a single extra penny is earned from the time and effort invested. It is my opinion that Academia is extremely unmeritocratic when it comes to financial rewards to scientists. But that's nothing new.

Of course there can be exceptions, I think the situation can be different for scientists working in the private sector. It would be nice to hear from them.

Now, as to this system of journals profiting crazily from research of others, I think this must have been caused by the general adoption of scientometrics, the most famous (or perhaps infamous) being Garfield's impact factor. As a consequence of what seems to me an irresponsible use of these metrics, most of the money invested in science today is allocated following citation patterns. This puts a great deal of power in the hands of publishers who learned to "dance to the music". Hence, great profits!

This is why in many universities today it is easier to get money to pay publication fees than to do actual research!

Dear colleagues

Dear Mehran Shahpari

I have already expressed my opinion on this topic above.

For me, an article is not measured by the publisher or the journal in which it is published. At least it shouldn't be that way.

Dear Mehran Shahpari, you are right. It really is very strange that we generate the knowledge, so we pay to disseminate the knowledge, and we receive nothing. I don't know who created this system.

I would like to discuss whether U-Multirank is an answer to this problem.

Here in Brazil, the postgraduate system is undergoing major changes. Until recently, the production of teachers was evaluated by these criteria already mentioned, which are generally related to the "prestige" of the magazine, etc.

For the next period, articles from professors in postgraduate programs will be measured by U-Multirank, a methodology created in 2014 by the Center for Higher Education in Gütersloh, Germany, and by the Center for Policy Studies in Higher Education at the University of Twente , In Holland. This rank looks at 5 aspects of the researcher's production, one of which is the name of the journal. Case study works, works with important results for the local economy, etc ..., which are usually published in regional journals, generally not indexed by major publishers, they are highly punctuated due to the great economic and social impact.

I think that the evaluation of graduate programs by U-Multirank solves this absurd problem of having to pay (several thousand dollars) to publish.

Paulo Natti

Directly to the heart of it! It's a shame. From an economic point of view one must rather become an editor or founder of a bunch of journals than a scientist. But this idea had already others, cf. Jeffrey Beall's potential predatory journal list...

https://beallslist.net/

Requesting for a waiver for part of the fee is one option; but it is better to go for subscription journal.