From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 08:53:52 -0400 I would be interested to know Heather's view of what the economics of journal publishing would be were the payments to contributors to change. For example, let's suppose a reviewer received $500 per article, each published article paid $1,000 to the authors collectively, associate editors earned $25,000 a year, and editors $100,000 and up. How much lower would the prices of journals go? Joe Esposito On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 7:32 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 09:48:14 -0700 > > Interesting article from Al Jazeera English on the increasing > percentage of faculty (76%) on the adjunct track, many below the > poverty line, and the potential implications of trends like MOOCs and > automated grading systems on academic labour: > > http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/04/20134119156459616.html > > What does this have to do with scholarly publishing? The whole system > depends on the free gifts (see note) of academics of their articles > and peer review services, not to mention conduct of research in the > first place. If the system that supports the researchers is melting > beneath our feet, what future is there for scholarly publishing, if > any? > > Note: acknowledging that these gifts are not always free, sometimes > royalties are involved, particularly for books, however even here they > are so far below actually paying people to do the work and write the > results that this is still primarily a gift economy for the scholar. > If you take a sabbatical at partial salary to write a book and get > royalties amounting to a small fraction of the salary differential, > both you and your university employer are heavily subsidizing the book > production. > > best, > > Dr. Heather G. Morrison > The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com