Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Peter Ansell]

On 23 May 2012 14:47, Richard Jensen  wrote:
> Making them pay $1000 to $5000 so their
> article is open access is a very unwise way to promote their scholarship.
> (Few if any prestigious history journals are now open access; this seems
> more an issue in sciences.)

Some open access journals waive the fees for any authors who are not
able to pay, removing this argument as a downside to the producer pays
model for open access.

In the user pays model there are similar fees *per institution* for
having the privilege of limited *access* to some single journals for a
single year, so the argument can easily be reversed. I guess you
already know what happens when you actually try to download all of the
articles for a journal you have *access* to on JSTOR.

Peter

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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Richard Jensen]

Piotr is misinformed. In History it is false that "The work of a 
reviewer does not count towards tenure, or any other reviews; nobody 
puts "I reviewed articles" on their CV."   There are about 4000 
universities in the country--I've taught at a bunch of them from high 
to low (and my spouse has been the dean at several others) so I have 
seen the high respect that administrators have for faculty who 
achieve national visibility by being asked to review. At the U of 
Illinois I and every other professor was asked to list the  service 
roles we played.


As for the authors--indeed a lot of authors are grad students or 
underemployed PhDs who publish because that's the path to getting an 
academic job.  They are taught how to do this in graduate seminars 
led by very highly paid professors.  Making them pay $1000 to $5000 
so their article is open access is a very unwise way to promote their 
scholarship. (Few if any prestigious history journals are now open 
access; this seems more an issue in sciences.)


As for the problem of journal access in poor countries. Well that is 
indeed a problem, but surely this loose talk about American taxpayers 
suggests that ALL the access outside the US to American funded 
research should be blocked .  Happily that won't happen. The problem 
is perhaps counterbalanced by the amazingly high # of foreign 
students who get a free ride from American graduate schools.


Richard Jensen


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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Piotr Konieczny]

The work of a reviewer does not count towards tenure, or any other 
reviews; nobody puts "I reviewed articles" on their CV, and reviewing 
books counts for very, very little. I don't think any number of book 
reviews would equal a peer reviewed journal publication in an academic 
job hunt. Therefore, why there may be some expectation that academics 
are paid for activities that include review, this cannot be controlled, 
and many academics refuse to do reviews, or do it poorly.


Whether the authors are paid is a more complex issue. First, not all 
authors published in the US journals are full-time academics at research 
position. I don't have numbers to cite, but I'd assume that a 
significant minority (20-30%) of articles come from grad students, 
scholars holding primarily teaching positions, independent scholars 
(including those on the job market), and from places outside US (thus 
foreign taxpayers are subsidizing US scholarship; that probably includes 
a tiny but sad percentage of people who publish works in publications 
they cannot afford to read - the anecdotal scholar from Africa, for 
example - or many of my colleagues in Poland, who don't have access to 
numerous journals which their library does not subscribe to, and whose 
wage of about 10,000 a year makes purchasing journal subscriptions or 
even individual articles very difficult).


Now, for the sake of the argument, I will accept that most (but not all) 
authors are paid by universities to publish ''somewhere''. The more 
prestigious the journal, the better, but there is requirement to publish 
behind restrictive paywalls, giving away one's copyright. There is an 
increasing number of prestigious open content journals, and publishing 
in those is a more ethical thing to do (but I accept the fact that they 
are still a minority, and often one may not have an easy choice).


As I mentioned earlier, I also accept the argument that it is good for a 
journal to have paid staff. If journals went free, the money the 
universities pay for subscriptions could be redirected to the journals, 
with a net benefit for the society, particularly the less privileged 
groups (scholars at poorer institutions/countries, and people outside 
academia, like Wikipedians).


I am not going to discuss whether editors are paid or not as I am 
relatively unfamiliar with that. Data would be appreciated.


PS. With regard to your medical analogy, I have one word for you: generics.
(At least, patents last 20 years, scholarly knowledge is copyrighted and 
locked for about a century...).


--
Piotr Konieczny

"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's 
laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski


On 5/22/2012 11:01 PM, Richard Jensen wrote:
Piotr says "Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are not 
paid"  That's completely false.  They are all paid professional 
salaries by their home universities, and the kind of work they do is 
counted in terms of getting jobs, promotions, pay raises and tenure.  
Furthermore for the authors of the articles published and books being 
reviewed, the coverage they get in the journals is a major factor in 
their own getting jobs and promotions.  That is how the American 
system works.


Indiana U sponsors a number of major journals and they are very 
pleased indeed with the international recognition this brings.


Why so many highly skilled professionals are required is a matter of 
quality control.  Th Journal of American history accepts only 20% of 
the history books submitted for review, and publishes only 10% of the 
articles submitted.


Yes you can buy cheap "natural cures" for what ails you as recommended 
by a friend, or you can pay $$$ for prescriptions written by a real MD 
and prepared by a real pharmaceutical company.  It's the same with 
scholarship.


Richard Jensen



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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[David Karger]

As has already been discussed, journals have real costs that can be 
covered *either* by charging readers *or* by charging writers.   
Scientific publications general have *optional* page charges, which of 
course few people pay.  But they could easily switch to requiring them.


Such a switch would be "cost neutral" for scholars overall: what is now 
spent on reading charges would instead be spent on writing charges.  
There would be some cost shifting for individuals: prolific authors 
would see their costs rise relative to others'.  This seems quite 
reasonable, as the prolific authors are likely to be the ones getting 
grants, which they can use to fund their authoring.  One might worry 
that this is a deterrent to publication.  But on the flip side, it 
removes a deterrent to reading others' work; I'm not going to guess 
whether we net a gain or a loss.  Making publication cost something 
might reduce the prevalence of low-quality publication, which would be a 
big win for all---I think we're much better off filtering at the source 
than forcing our readers to weed out the junk.


Author charges are also much easier to manage than reader charges: they 
are a single, predictable large sum that can be set to what is necessary 
to cover the cost of publication *at the time of publication*, as 
opposed to reader charges which must be set based on speculation about 
the number of readers of an article.



On 5/22/2012 11:01 PM, Richard Jensen wrote:
Piotr says "Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are not 
paid"  That's completely false.  They are all paid professional 
salaries by their home universities, and the kind of work they do is 
counted in terms of getting jobs, promotions, pay raises and tenure.  
Furthermore for the authors of the articles published and books being 
reviewed, the coverage they get in the journals is a major factor in 
their own getting jobs and promotions.  That is how the American 
system works.


Indiana U sponsors a number of major journals and they are very 
pleased indeed with the international recognition this brings.


Why so many highly skilled professionals are required is a matter of 
quality control.  Th Journal of American history accepts only 20% of 
the history books submitted for review, and publishes only 10% of the 
articles submitted.


Yes you can buy cheap "natural cures" for what ails you as recommended 
by a friend, or you can pay $$$ for prescriptions written by a real MD 
and prepared by a real pharmaceutical company.  It's the same with 
scholarship.


Richard Jensen



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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Fred Bauder]

> Piotr says "Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are not
> paid"  That's completely false.  They are all paid professional
> salaries by their home universities, and the kind of work they do is
> counted in terms of getting jobs, promotions, pay raises and
> tenure.  Furthermore for the authors of the articles published and
> books being reviewed, the coverage they get in the journals is a
> major factor in their own getting jobs and promotions.  That is how
> the American system works.
>
> Indiana U sponsors a number of major journals and they are very
> pleased indeed with the international recognition this brings.
>
> Why so many highly skilled professionals are required is a matter of
> quality control.  Th Journal of American history accepts only 20% of
> the history books submitted for review, and publishes only 10% of the
> articles submitted.
>
> Yes you can buy cheap "natural cures" for what ails you as
> recommended by a friend, or you can pay $$$ for prescriptions written
> by a real MD and prepared by a real pharmaceutical company.  It's the
> same with scholarship.
>
> Richard Jensen

She said, "Let them eat cake!"

Very inflammatory words; in effect, you set out a revolutionary manifesto.

Fred



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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Richard Jensen]

Piotr says "Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are not 
paid"  That's completely false.  They are all paid professional 
salaries by their home universities, and the kind of work they do is 
counted in terms of getting jobs, promotions, pay raises and 
tenure.  Furthermore for the authors of the articles published and 
books being reviewed, the coverage they get in the journals is a 
major factor in their own getting jobs and promotions.  That is how 
the American system works.


Indiana U sponsors a number of major journals and they are very 
pleased indeed with the international recognition this brings.


Why so many highly skilled professionals are required is a matter of 
quality control.  Th Journal of American history accepts only 20% of 
the history books submitted for review, and publishes only 10% of the 
articles submitted.


Yes you can buy cheap "natural cures" for what ails you as 
recommended by a friend, or you can pay $$$ for prescriptions written 
by a real MD and prepared by a real pharmaceutical company.  It's the 
same with scholarship.


Richard Jensen



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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[WereSpielChequers]

As Richard Jensen said, the old style dead tree journals rely on "dozens of
editorial board members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate
articles and write for it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by their
own universities to do this kind of high prestige service."  No one
disputes that we still need the universities and the academics. We just
need to upgrade them to a different publishing model. There are many
uncertainties as to how this model will look and how quick the revolution
will be. But one thing we can be certain of, the unpaid scholars upon which
it depends will be no worse off when their employers realise that prestige
is moving online and open source.

WSC

On 22 May 2012 20:13, Richard Jensen  wrote:

> There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians how
> academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly
> journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of scholars working
> together (almost all of whom are paid professional salaries by
> universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the total
> expenses for a scholarly journal, so the advantage of going electronic is
> small in terms of production costs.
>
> I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American History''
> --I used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of editorial board
> members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate articles and write for
> it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by their own universities to do
> this kind of high prestige "service."  (History professors are paid for
> research, teaching and service--the average salary in USA for a full
> professor of history is $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14
> in-house staff members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana
> University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight years of
> specialized, expensive post-graduate education.  Book reviews are a main
> role. They read 3000 new books a year and select the most important 600 for
> actual review, using a database of 11,000 available scholars. 300
> full-length manuscripts a year are submitted and the senior editors and
> outside reviewers narrow that to the best 10%. The staffers do intensive
> quality control on the accepted articles and are backed by a major
> university library (which is expensive.) They occupy nice offices with
> phones & computers etc that are also paid for.  The Journal pays travel
> expenses for meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year with 1300 pages of
> high quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 historians and libraries.
>
> Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed and
> give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there but the
> necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to develop. It
> costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary source" that Wikipedia
> wholly depends upon. The question is who pays for it.
>
> Richard Jensen
>
>
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Brian Keegan]

"Anyone can try to publish a junk X single-handed and give it away free;
almost nobody does so. The software is there but the necessary expertise is
very expensive and takes decades to develop."

Similar words were also uttered by newspaper editors, encyclopedia
publishers, proprietary software developers, and any number of other
knowledge robberbarons standing athwart history imagining they and their
institutions alone, had the requisite skills and expertise to engage in
knowledge production.

Until they didn't. Enjoy your new neighbors in trash heap of history.
On May 22, 2012 3:13 PM, "Richard Jensen"  wrote:

> There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians how
> academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly
> journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of scholars working
> together (almost all of whom are paid professional salaries by
> universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the total
> expenses for a scholarly journal, so the advantage of going electronic is
> small in terms of production costs.
>
> I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American History''
> --I used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of editorial board
> members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate articles and write for
> it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by their own universities to do
> this kind of high prestige "service."  (History professors are paid for
> research, teaching and service--the average salary in USA for a full
> professor of history is $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14
> in-house staff members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana
> University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight years of
> specialized, expensive post-graduate education.  Book reviews are a main
> role. They read 3000 new books a year and select the most important 600 for
> actual review, using a database of 11,000 available scholars. 300
> full-length manuscripts a year are submitted and the senior editors and
> outside reviewers narrow that to the best 10%. The staffers do intensive
> quality control on the accepted articles and are backed by a major
> university library (which is expensive.) They occupy nice offices with
> phones & computers etc that are also paid for.  The Journal pays travel
> expenses for meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year with 1300 pages of
> high quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 historians and libraries.
>
> Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed and
> give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there but the
> necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to develop. It
> costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary source" that Wikipedia
> wholly depends upon. The question is who pays for it.
>
> Richard Jensen
>
>
>
> __**_
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Piotr Konieczny]

"Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly journal."

Please don't misquote me, Richard. What I said is that a grad student 
(in the capacity of assistant/managing editor) is the only person who 
needs to be paid specifically for their work on the journal. Of course I 
agree that it takes hundreds of scholars to produce an issue, but they 
are not paid specifically for that.


You say that "Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the 
total expenses for a scholarly journal". Well, I am very curious what 
are the costs then? Let me repeat: editors, authors and reviewers are 
not paid, so labor is not an issue. Online publishing can be easily 
achieved for no cost. You say, as quoted above, that printing and 
mailing costs are small. So, what is that money needed for?


Your example of a ''The Journal of American History'' is quite 
interesting. I am in fact quite familiar with another book review 
journal, the "International Sociology Review of Books". It reviews 
several dozen books per year; reviews are done by volunteer scholars, 
and the only person getting paid is the (part-time) grad student who 
does most of the labor-intensive organizational/record-keeping job. I am 
afraid I cannot quote the output number in terms of pages and printed 
issues, so let's assume for argument sake that it is about half or a 
quarter of the journal you cite. From your example, I am a bit unclear 
on who writes the review - the journal staff? Or is their role to select 
which books will be reviewed? Review the reviews? Copyediting?


I will now make two assertions.

First, I assume that the model  you describe - where journal has 
dedicated offices and several full time staff members - form a small 
minority of all academic journals. Most academic journals are run with 
no dedicated offices, and with no full-time staff members. I would 
gladly accept any statistics confirming or rejecting the above.


Second, while I applaud the high quality content produced by such a 
journal, I am not convinced that  you need all of that (dedicated 
offices, dozen or so full time staff) to produce "non-junk" academic 
content. It is, IMHO, an illustration of an obsolete business model, one 
with too many running costs, as demonstrated by the existence of a free 
(open content) alternative. I'd compare this model, in the context of 
our group theme here, to the difference between Britannica and 
Wikipedia. Britannica relied on offices, full time staff, and was the 
model encyclopedia - and than the Internet came and showed us all the 
same product can be made in higher quality for next to no cost. For 
another example, look at the transformation of the newspaper business, 
with numerous papers going under, as the new, Internet-based net news 
services are taking over.


I will note, ending, that I am not saying that the open content model is 
fully superior. Ideally, a journal should ensure quick turn around 
times, and quality control (copy-editing, and so on). I don't have a 
perfect solution for all, but what I am pretty sure is that at the very 
least, the price charged for most of the traditional journals is 
significantly inflated. Whoever funds the journals, should do so fully, 
so that their content is free to the reader. I don't know who operates 
''The Journal of American History", but at least for many traditional, 
big-name publishers, we (tax-payers and scholars) are subsidizing 
enormous profits of a small group. For example, from 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier : "In 2010, Elsevier reported a 
profit margin of 36% on revenues of $3.2 billion" Think a moment about 
where that money is coming from, and where is it going...


--
Piotr Konieczny

"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's 
laurels, is defeat." --Józef Pilsudski


On 5/22/2012 3:13 PM, Richard Jensen wrote:
There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians 
how academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a 
scholarly journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of 
scholars working together (almost all of whom are paid professional 
salaries by universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a 
fraction of the total expenses for a scholarly journal, so the 
advantage of going electronic is small in terms of production costs.


I talked just now with the editor of --I used to be on its editorial 
board. It has dozens of editorial board members and hundreds of unpaid 
scholars who evaluate articles and write for it.  They are paid not by 
the Journal but by their own universities to do this kind of high 
prestige "service."  (History professors are paid for research, 
teaching and service--the average salary in USA for a full professor 
of history is $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14 in-house 
staff members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana 
University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight years 
of 

Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Fred Bauder]

We have about as much talent and personnel as one journal. And an
operation of about the same order of magnitude.

Fred

> There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians
> how academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a
> scholarly journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of
> scholars working together (almost all of whom are paid professional
> salaries by universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a
> fraction of the total expenses for a scholarly journal, so the
> advantage of going electronic is small in terms of production costs.
>
> I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American
> History'' --I used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of
> editorial board members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate
> articles and write for it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by
> their own universities to do this kind of high prestige
> "service."  (History professors are paid for research, teaching and
> service--the average salary in USA for a full professor of history is
> $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14 in-house staff
> members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana
> University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight
> years of specialized, expensive post-graduate education.  Book
> reviews are a main role. They read 3000 new books a year and select
> the most important 600 for actual review, using a database of 11,000
> available scholars. 300 full-length manuscripts a year are submitted
> and the senior editors and outside reviewers narrow that to the best
> 10%. The staffers do intensive quality control on the accepted
> articles and are backed by a major university library (which is
> expensive.) They occupy nice offices with phones & computers etc that
> are also paid for.  The Journal pays travel expenses for
> meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year with 1300 pages of high
> quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 historians and libraries.
>
> Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed
> and give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there
> but the necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to
> develop. It costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary
> source" that Wikipedia wholly depends upon. The question is who pays for
> it.
>
> Richard Jensen
>
>
>
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Aaron Halfaker]

I'm sure encyclopedias used to have a similarly dedicated staff before
Wikipedia came forward as the superior (overall) model of information
dissemination.

On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:13 PM, Richard Jensen  wrote:

> There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians how
> academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly
> journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of scholars working
> together (almost all of whom are paid professional salaries by
> universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the total
> expenses for a scholarly journal, so the advantage of going electronic is
> small in terms of production costs.
>
> I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American History''
> --I used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of editorial board
> members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate articles and write for
> it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by their own universities to do
> this kind of high prestige "service."  (History professors are paid for
> research, teaching and service--the average salary in USA for a full
> professor of history is $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14
> in-house staff members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana
> University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight years of
> specialized, expensive post-graduate education.  Book reviews are a main
> role. They read 3000 new books a year and select the most important 600 for
> actual review, using a database of 11,000 available scholars. 300
> full-length manuscripts a year are submitted and the senior editors and
> outside reviewers narrow that to the best 10%. The staffers do intensive
> quality control on the accepted articles and are backed by a major
> university library (which is expensive.) They occupy nice offices with
> phones & computers etc that are also paid for.  The Journal pays travel
> expenses for meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year with 1300 pages of
> high quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 historians and libraries.
>
> Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed and
> give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there but the
> necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to develop. It
> costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary source" that Wikipedia
> wholly depends upon. The question is who pays for it.
>
> Richard Jensen
>
>
>
> __**_
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Re: [Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Ward Cunningham]

I've seen professional scholarship go off track.

I wrote wiki to give a voice to programmers who were struggling under the bad 
advice offered by academic computer science and software engineering. That's 
worked pretty well for us, no thanks to ACM or IEEE.

>From this perspective, everything Richard says seems rather romantic.

I encourage everyone to consider all the complexities that come with long-lived 
institutions. However, for those looking for a quick answer, its hard to go 
wrong with free. 

Best regards. -- Ward

On May 22, 2012, at 12:13 PM, Richard Jensen wrote:

> There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians how 
> academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a scholarly 
> journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of scholars working 
> together (almost all of whom are paid professional salaries by universities.) 
> Printing and mailing costs are only a fraction of the total expenses for a 
> scholarly journal, so the advantage of going electronic is small in terms of 
> production costs.
> 
> I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American History'' --I 
> used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of editorial board members 
> and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate articles and write for it.  They 
> are paid not by the Journal but by their own universities to do this kind of 
> high prestige "service."  (History professors are paid for research, teaching 
> and service--the average salary in USA for a full professor of history is 
> $83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14 in-house staff members, who 
> are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana University.  Most have PhD's 
> or are PhD candidates--that's eight years of specialized, expensive 
> post-graduate education.  Book reviews are a main role. They read 3000 new 
> books a year and select the most important 600 for actual review, using a 
> database of 11,000 available scholars. 300 full-length manuscripts a year are 
> submitted and the senior editors and outside reviewers narrow that to the 
> best 10%. The staffers do intensive quality control on the accepted articles 
> and are backed by a major university library (which is expensive.) They 
> occupy nice offices with phones & computers etc that are also paid for.  The 
> Journal pays travel expenses for meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year 
> with 1300 pages of high quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 
> historians and libraries.
> 
> Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed and 
> give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there but the 
> necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to develop. It costs 
> real money to produce the "reliable secondary source" that Wikipedia wholly 
> depends upon. The question is who pays for it.
> 
> Richard Jensen
> 
> 
> 
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> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l


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[Wiki-research-l] real scholarship is expensive

[Richard Jensen]

There seems to be a great deal of misunderstanding among Wikipedians 
how academe actually works. Piotr thinks a grad student can produce a 
scholarly journal. Look at history. In reality it takes hundreds of 
scholars working together (almost all of whom are paid professional 
salaries by universities.) Printing and mailing costs are only a 
fraction of the total expenses for a scholarly journal, so the 
advantage of going electronic is small in terms of production costs.


I talked just now with the editor of ''The Journal of American 
History'' --I used to be on its editorial board. It has dozens of 
editorial board members and hundreds of unpaid scholars who evaluate 
articles and write for it.  They are paid not by the Journal but by 
their own universities to do this kind of high prestige 
"service."  (History professors are paid for research, teaching and 
service--the average salary in USA for a full professor of history is 
$83,000 plus 25% benefits.)  The Journal has 14 in-house staff 
members, who are paid salaries at rates standard for Indiana 
University.  Most have PhD's or are PhD candidates--that's eight 
years of specialized, expensive post-graduate education.  Book 
reviews are a main role. They read 3000 new books a year and select 
the most important 600 for actual review, using a database of 11,000 
available scholars. 300 full-length manuscripts a year are submitted 
and the senior editors and outside reviewers narrow that to the best 
10%. The staffers do intensive quality control on the accepted 
articles and are backed by a major university library (which is 
expensive.) They occupy nice offices with phones & computers etc that 
are also paid for.  The Journal pays travel expenses for 
meetings.  The output is 4 issues a year with 1300 pages of high 
quality scholarship delivered to about 10,000 historians and libraries.


Indeed anyone can try to publish a junk history journal single-handed 
and give it away free; almost nobody does so. The software is there 
but the necessary expertise is very expensive and takes decades to 
develop. It costs real money to produce the "reliable secondary 
source" that Wikipedia wholly depends upon. The question is who pays for it.


Richard Jensen



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