Heather, I'm curious about your final note that CC-BY is not advisable for humanities. Why is it so? What's so different in HSS publications compared to, say, biology or mathematics where CC-BY is a "gold standard"? What other license is most recommended in humanities? Thanks.
Marcin On 01/25/2013 11:32 PM, Heather Morrison wrote: > Some reflections on the Sage OPEN $99 per article news > > Sridar Gutam on the GOAL list has pointed out that even this APF, for a > scholar from India, is far too high a price. Even in the West, I hear that > there are rumblings on HSS listservs that scholars are up in arms about what > looks like an attempt to shift the costs to them, personally. This could be a > downside of a cost this low. > > Some reflections on whether for-profit at $99 is realistic - see Gary > Daught's blog post for details on the numbers I'm referring to: > https://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2013/01/24/article-processing-charges-reduced-to-99-on-sage-open-humanities-and-social-sciences-mega-journal/#comment-1872 > > Let’s think a little bit about the work involved and how this might relate to > costs. 1,400 article submissions over the course of a year, assuming 200 > business days per year, amounts to 7 article submissions per day. 160 > published articles means .8 articles completed per day. > > How long would it take a managing editor to process 7 article submissions per > day? Some would be immediately rejected as out of scope or so clearly of poor > quality that they aren’t worth sending out for peer review. With an automated > submissions process, there is some work involved up to the decision point, > then often the rejection can be completed with an automated e-mail reply. > > Less than one published article per day, even with a high rejection rate, > should not be a huge task for a PLoS ONE-like publish-if-it’s-good-research > and DIY copyediting approach. > > At $395 / article = $64,000 / year, this should be a fair amount of money for > staffing and overhead – it’s not even clear to me that this kind of volume > would be a full-time position. > > If Sage OPEN were to increase its acceptance rate – perhaps by adding staff > capable of dealing with a wider range of subjects, disciplines, languages – > then it could benefit from cost efficiencies. If the acceptance rate were > 1,000, at $99 / article, that’s just under $100,000 per year. Publishing 5 > articles per day, when the publisher’s staff is not actually doing any of the > editing, peer review, copyediting, etc., seems quite doable. Hire a Managing > Editor with some academic background (perhaps a Master’s Degree?) at $50,000 > per year, a junior assistant at $20,000 per year to deal with invoicing, > factor in 25% overhead = total costs of $87,500, for a profit of $12,500 or > an operating profit margin at 12.5%. Not bad - most of us wouldn't mind at > all if our pension funds were paying out at 12.5% per year. > > I’m not saying this is what this costs, but it does look like the idea of > attractive profits at $99 processing costs per article is something we should > be having a close look at. > > As a final note – I find this interesting because of the PRICE. However, > because Sage OPEN uses CC-BY which I consider to be frequently inadvisable in > the social sciences and humanities due to concerns about research ethics, > third party rights, and reasonable concerns about accuracy and author > reputation when derivatives are allowed, I would NOT advise anyone to publish > in Sage OPEN. If Sage opens their minds about licensing alternatives I’d be > much more interested. > > best, > > Heather G. Morrison > The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics > http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > -- Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT http://tunedit.org http://www.facebook.com/TunedIT http://twitter.com/TunedIT http://www.linkedin.com/in/marcinwojnarski TunedIT - Online Laboratory for Intelligent Algorithms _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
