I now understand. I recognise most of the anecdotes that Science Guide relays. They are often interesting but sometimes shows that the terminology has obscured the question. It is not a survey in the sense that information scientists understand surveys.
Yes of course what editors (in chief) get paid as editors varies a great deal. I suppose there must be journals that pay referees (regarded as editors in one contribution here) but I have never been involved in one. Definitely some big journals do pay associate editors. The editor broadly speaking will be paid more if they are really significant researchers and if the journal is a big and important journal.
In my experience, the more canny editors may wish to be paid mostly in travel for tax reasons. Contracts with editors should differentiate between expenses including costs of editorial offices where the editor maintains it and a fee. In my experience royalties are very rare – I can only think of one example. I wrote guidance on behalf of ICSU (the International Council of Science) a long time ago: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/icsu/guidelines.pdf
In some (medical) areas publishers buy the valuable time of editors. I do know that the cost of paying the editor was a major consideration in starting a new journals and as important if not more important where the journal is open access. Indeed two of the biggest open access publishers avoided appointing editors in chiefs and in house staff made the decisions to accept and reject. I do not know whether this continues.
What I do know from three years of interviewing early career researchers that many of them saw the editor-in-chief as the key person (the decision making person), and they often do not know what publishers do.
It is typical of a lot of this debate that the fact that few editors may want anyone to know much they get -- whether it might be viewed as too much or too little is ignored. I bet that a serious survey of remuneration for editors, which allowed the editors being surveyed to be anonymous, would demonstrate they want no transparency. Is this important?
Anthony
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
From: <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 28 May 2019 08:29:36 +0000
Saskia,
I’m afraid I’m not as confident. Every business (for profit or not) has unique cost structures (especially true of that catch-all, overheads) that makes comparisons difficult or even unfair.
For example, at OECD we are exempt from commercial taxes and our salaries are decided by a committee of international organizations. So on one hand I have an unfair advantage over commercial publishers and on the other I have no control over how fast staff costs increase. A learned society in the US pays lower taxes than a for-profit US publishers; commercial publishers based in Ireland benefit from lower taxes and wages than commercial publishers in Germany. You can see the difficulty.
It would be much better if Plan S encouraged buyers to judge value against price. This would oblige publishers to justify their prices against the value they add. But, and here’s the challenge, that means buyers being prepared to say no to publishing in certain journals or with certain publishers because they can get better value elsewhere. Now, will academics tolerate that?
Toby
Toby Green
On 28 May 2019, at 03:46, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Saskia de Vries <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 27 May 2019 10:40:32 +0000
Hi all,
May I add to this discussion the factor ‘transparancy of costs’ that is one of the key principles of Plan S – and not accidentally also for the Fair Open Access Alliance. As Plan S compliancy will mean that publishers have to break down and open up the costs of their APC prices, this will give academia valuable data to compare services and prices in the next couple of years. This will eventually lead to restauration of market forces, and subsequently lowering of prices, I am sure!
Saskia
[SNIP]