I always wonder that why the IF journals which are not open access pay anything to the authors? They charge 15 to 40 USD for downloading a paper. And those publishers provide library subscriptions also for a lot of money to university and research institutes all over the world. But author dint get paid any many for number of downloads? Why is this? Once a author publish a book he gets money for that but research paper is of no worth?
Hi Ali,
Most journals are run by a relatively small group of big multinational publishing companies with basically similar business models based on minimising their costs and maximising their profits. The publishers know that researchers need to publish papers to advance their careers, thus providing the author with a benefit (and research papers have never incurred a fee paid to the author by the publisher). The short reason that books generate royalty payments by publishers to authors and papers don't is because it takes much more effort to write a book, generates more profit for the publisher than does a paper and that there are many times more papers published annually than there are books. (For more detail on academic publishing business models see this, for example: https://medium.com/@jasonschmitt/can-t-disrupt-this-elsevier-and-the-25-2-billion-dollar-a-year-academic-publishing-business-aa3b9618d40a#.4h6x01q59). Hope this helps, Cheers, Matt
Thanks for you reply dear Matt Colloff. I know what you said but Still I wonder Springer Elsviser, IEEE, ACM, Wiley are very big publishing groups and they can give author even just a 50% or 33% for published paper dowlnlaoed and money earned by publisher. 33% they can keep 33% say is gone for managing things etc.
Hi,
The main reason why IF journals' publishers do not pay anything to authors is because when they publish the paper they become also the owners of the paper's copyrights. This means that the paper is open only to subscribers, and this enhances the publishers' revenues.
Hi,
The authors of the subscription journals articles are scientists from the academia. Publishing an article in a subscription journal for them is a privilege since it helps them with the promotion in their institute- the more a faculty member publishes in those journals (that are usually quality journals) the more chance he has for promotion. The publishers of these journals seem to think that promoting academic promotion is enough as payment for authors. They also think that subscription fees and downloading charges should be their revenues for investing in publishing the journals.
I really wonder why many people dont talk about it. We need to propagate the issue properly. The publication industries have grown at a larger scale and it has been a profitable venture all the more. the open discussion about it surely will result in positive outcomes. I believe so.
Thanks for your contribution Avishag Gordon but I think we really need to negate this idea that mere 'academic promotion' by the publishers of the journals does qualify them for extracting 'their revenues for investing in publishing journals'.
The main reason is : articles submitted by researchers are not in big demand except for researchers themselves. The publishing industry is not a supply and demand market : Jean Claude Guédon used the "inelastic market " concept and it means what's out there does not obey to a classic market mechanism. Therefore publishers "own" the right for the paper by the mere fact that they publish it and promote it giving it a large public and allowing the authors to show them for promotion , prizes an funding.The open access movement is the solution but it needs more effort and work.
Thanks very much Samir for explaining this basic market mechanism of the scientific publishing industry - very helpful! I agree with you that open access is the way to go, but that it requires more work. For me, the first step was to get my work out from behind the publishers' firewalls and ensure everything was freely available on ResearchGate. The Russian website http://sci-hub.cc/ has a similar intent. The next step is to try a simple experiment: publishing a paper solely on ResearchGate after seeking peer review from ResearchGate members. The resulting publication will have all the attributes of a paper published by Elsevier, Springer or Wiley (including a doi). The advantage is that such an approach extends the uses of ResearchGate as a global community of scholars. The disadvantage might be that it could be difficult to find independent referees prepared to volunteer their time. Cheers, Matt
Thank you Matt.It happens that I have been working on similar issues. I specialize on open peer review and I welcome this proposal. Reviewing our papers by our colleagues is feasible and I'm open to any ideas.
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