From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 07:56:11 +0100

Yes I agree. I am speaking about STM but this is where the big numbers
are. I am aware humanities journals worked differently though now many
or most of the larger ones are handled in the same way by larger
companies. At least that is my understanding. Corrections welcome

Yes it would be possible to set up a system though it does mean every
author has an account. As a journal author I get a small payment every
year from the Authors Licensing and Collecting Society in the UK.

I do not know how it came about that book authors had royalties and
very rarely did anyone in the journal editorial structure even the
editor received a royalty. I can think of a tiny number of instances
from the 1970s. This is of course historical. I suspect that any sort
of payment to editors of journals (never mind authors) came about when
commercial publishers became a more important part of the overall
picture - they had of course always been there. My memory is that in
the past learned societies paid journal editors nothing. Commercial
publishers I have worked for always paid editors although sometimes it
was so-called expenses.

If anyone knows how journals and books moved apart in the way they
were run and the way they were financed I would love to know. Has
anyone written on this?

This is of course history. I am not arguing that it is good - or bad.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 18:34:32 -0500

In STM journals you're right that probably the majority of articles
are written by multiple authors. That is certainly NOT true for
journals in the humanities. Social sciences fall somewhere in between,
I'd say. But I'm not sure why this would be a problem, since book
co-authors and co-editors are generally paid royalties and shares of
subsidiary rights.

I'm not sure what length has to do with it either. if you look at a
typical anthology in philosophy, for example, you'll see that the
great majority of the contents are reprinted journal articles, rather
than excerpts from books.

No doubt the main reason for the difference in treatment,
historically, is that the cost of tracking subsidiary rights income
for journal
authors--especially for publishers with large numbers of journals and
hence large numbers of authors--was considered excessive in relation
to the benefits likely to accrue to any authors.  My guess is that
this kind of cost is much less with fully automated tracking systems,
though it no doubt remains true that the vast majority of journal
authors would not make a great deal of money from the sharing of such
income.

Sandy