From: Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2019 10:40:16 +0100

Joe,

I brought it up here because it came to my mind when reacting to the
matter of payment to editors (external academic Editors, not in-house
ones, for the avoidance of confusion). The context of the thread, as I
saw it and still see it, was an article Leo Waaijers drew attention
to, and which mentioned Elsevier had offered payment to Editors of
subscription journals, in order to secure their support for the
subscription model. Payment of Editors is nothing new. You – correctly
– brought up the proportionality of payment to published volume. This
rung a bell. My memory of the criticism levelled at APCs when we first
introduced them at BioMed Central, the criticism that APCs encouraged
acceptance of articles and discouraged selectivity, is still vivid.
But there is no fundamental difference between APC-supported OA
journals and subscription journals in that regard. My memory of the
criticism of OA journals as if the the problem of income proportional
to published volume – whether income to publisher or editor – were
unique to APC-supported journals just flowed directly from my mind to
my keyboard.

Apologies for leaving you puzzled.

Jan Velterop

PS. I do see that proportional payment, in whichever model, may lead
to the wrong incentives to accept/reject. But proper alternatives to
publishers being paid by published volume only (APCs as well as
subscription fees relate to published volume, not selectivity) have
not been put forward on any meaningful scale yet. There may be some
prospect in preprints, if they get widely accepted as serious
knowledge sharing channels, and cited as such. Then the core role of
journals, the service of providing 'ribbons' for career and reputation
management purposes (and not inextricably bound to knowledge
communication anymore, since print has been replaced by the internet),
becomes clearer and payment for those elective services less
problematic, because not unavoidable anymore.


On 09/01/2019 06:07, LIBLICENSE wrote:
From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 21:51:13 -0500

Jan,

I take your point, but I am puzzled by why you brought it up here. Is
there any suggestion that traditional models are somehow more pure
than OA? I don't see that here. The context, as I understood it, is
that some people were asking if editors got paid and other responded
by saying that, yes, they did.

Joe Esposito


On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 8:55 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2019 09:53:14 +0100

"Larger journals (measured by income) pay more."

This is generally true. It is also not unlikely to be a factor in
Editors' acceptance/rejection policies. Selectivity and prestige are
important, but income, particularly when it is "per accepted paper" or
"by published volume", as it often enough is, is likely to be too,
especially if the payment is substantial. The idea that only
APC-funded open access journals might possibly suffer from this
phenomenon is a myth.

Jan Velterop

On 07/01/2019 23:37, LIBLICENSE wrote:
From: JJE Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2019 11:35:34 -0500

I have yet to encounter an STM publisher that did not pay the editors
of its journals. In HSS the situation is not uniform. Larger journals
(measured by income) pay more.

Joe Esposito