From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2012 23:19:05 -0600

This is a disturbing revelation. If 75% of these OA journals are not
having copyediting done by professionals, then that is a clear
indicator that their level of quality is not at the same level as most
TA journals. There seems to be a too easy assumption made here that
copyediting is something that anyone can do and requires no special
skills.  (Perhaps the same too easy assumption is made throughout
higher education that teaching is something anyone can do, so no
special training is required for people in graduate school to learn
how to become a good teacher.)  Even if some scholars have the
capability of doing this job well, the fact remains that this is not a
good use of their time. As Colin Day argued long ago, universities are
paying a premium if professors are devoting a lot of time to this sort
of work instead of doing research and teaching in the classroom.
Skilled copyeditors do not command salaries anywhere close to those of
senior professors who edit journals. Having the latter do work that
can be done better by lower paid employees is one of those hidden
costs that seem not to be included in determining what the real costs
of publishing OA journals are.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 25 Feb 2012 18:10:45 -0800
>
> Sandy Thatcher wrote....
>
>> At $188 per article, clearly these articles are not being copyedited.
>
>
> To see what Edgar & Willinsky said about copy editing in their
> article, see the html of the final version here:
> http://src-online.ca/index.php/src/article/view/24/41
>
> A search for "copy edit" finds:
>
> "In terms of the distribution of publishing tasks, this group of
> journals represents very active editorial teams, with 76% of the
> editors engaged in copy editing, 70% involved in proofreading, and 58%
> taking a hand in laying out the articles (see Table 8). This does not
> mean that the editors had sole responsibility for these tasks,
> although this does appear to be the case in at least some instances.
> There are also journals with paid employees doing copy editing,
> layout, and proofreading. Students, whether paid or volunteer, play a
> relatively minor role in the production of these journals, with no
> more than 10% of the journals deploying students in this way. It is
> also worth noting that, although OJS is designed to enable the author
> to participate in both the copy editing (to review copy edits and
> respond to author queries) and proofreading, in the majority of cases
> the journals are not involving the authors in these tasks."
>
> A chart indicates that 25% of journals have paid employees doing copy editing.
>
> It may of interest given recent discussion of article versioning that
> I have used and built on this work extensively, based primarily on the
> preprint. This is the first time that I've glanced at the final
> version, in html only. I've never looked at the publishers' final PDF,
> and am not sure that there is any compelling reason for me to do so.
> The html confirms the element that is most pertinent to my work, the
> calculation of the average first copy cost at $188.37, was not changed
> with peer review.
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com