Anthony has a point regarding the murky billing practices of some types of service providers, but perhaps a better comparison is billing for automotive service. We get an explanation of parts and labor that went into the service. As the long-time owner of a VW Karmann Ghia, receiving a bill for flushing the radiator on an air cooled engine, is reason for a serious discussion with the mechanic. “We always bill for that, whether we actually perform the service or not” is not defensible. I think, over time, the same principle will apply to publishers claiming a 40% profit margin, because they always do it that way...
Darcee
From: Saskia de Vries <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 12:53:00 +0000
In order to get a scope of the shape, size and form of compensation to editors, ScienceGuide recently spread a short questionnaire through the Dutch Young Academy of Sciences (De Jonge Akademie) and through Twitter asking editors to speak up. The results show that they differ a lot, see https://www.scienceguide.nl/2019/04/so-what-about-editor-compensation/.
The newly published Revised Plan S Implementation Guide still mentions cost transparancy as a condition for compliancy – I would assume that the cost of paying (out of publishing house) academic editors would be one of those cost posts.
Saskia
From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 30 May 2019 09:25:24 +0100
I do not buy services or offer services to funders, but I have never heard of a service provider which breaks down their costs in the sort of detail which I understand is being asked for. I am assuming that the argument is that publishers are just another service provider as far as funders are concerned. As a private person do we ask for a breakdown of how utilities justify their prices by breakdown of costs? Perhaps some do. Yes of course if you look for a grant as researcher you do have to give breakdowns of costs in a way which researchers find (reference can be provided, but it is an old one and so this is an impression/experience) irksome and getting in the way of actually doing the research.
Incidentally as others have pointed out all commercial publishers and many if not most not-for-profit organisations pay their editors and editorial back-up. Why use the word “some”?
Anthony
From: Saskia de Vries <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 29 May 2019 06:25:25 +0000
Hi Toby,
True of course, situations differ. And you haven’t even mentioned the fact that there are also differences between what publishers (have to) do in various disciplines, like type-editing in humanities or pay their academic editors/editorial boards in some of the hard sciences. But all Plan S asks for is for publishers to make their costs transparant. Including the profit they make, of course, after taxes 😊. But a lot of the work publishers do ís comparable: we should see them as service providers.
For academics, the perseived value of journals is very much linked to impact factors in most disciplines. But that value should be attibuted to the work of the editors and peer reviewers of a journal, so not to the publishers but to academia itself.
Now that funders of research realise that the dessimination of the research they fund is their responsability and they want transparancy of the costs of it, this will open up the market as funders are in a much stronger negotiation position: top down. And I hope that once academics realise that they are adding the most important value to journals, quality control, they will also start pushing (some of the) publishers to lower their prices: bottom up.
But yes, I am an optimist!
Saskia
[SNIP]