In which journal should one publish?

I feel strongly that there are serious problems concerning the pricing
of academic journals and the amount of research money which goes into
their subscriptions. In essence, authors donate their work (or
sometimes even pay money as well) to a company who then sells it back to
them. In the old days, there wasn't much choice, but these days, with
electronic versions of papers, there is a chance to break free. (Note
that the question of changing the refereeing system a) is a completely
separate question and b) not what I'm looking to discuss here.) If one
wants to do the right thing when submitting a paper, three criteria must
be fulfilled: 1) it should be readable by anyone without paying any fee;
2) it shouldn't cost the author to have it published (both because this
can exclude poor authors and because there is a temptation for journals
to print low-quality stuff as long as it is paid for); and 3) the author
should retain copyright, or at least officially be allowed to have a
copy of the paper at least on the arXiv, on a personal website and on an
institute website.

Are there any such journals?

For established scientists, these criteria are enough. For others,
there will be the additional requirement: proven quality.

On Tue, 11 Oct 11, Phillip Helbig wrote:
Are there any such journals?

PASA fits the bill, I think. I published my last paper there. Yes
they lean Australian but they publish others also,

http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138.htm

In article , Eric Flesch
writes:

Are there any such journals?

PASA fits the bill, I think.

I've just had a brief look; will put them on the list.

I published my last paper there. Yes
they lean Australian but they publish others also,

http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/138.htm

PASA is substantially cheaper than other journals published by the same
company (which charge $3000), but $1925 is still rather expensive. Yes,
this is for open access. If one doesn't want open access, perhaps one
pays nothing, but then the reader has to pay.

Of course, a journal, even an online journal, will have SOME costs, and
I think there is a role for journals to play, and the money has to come
from somewhere, and the authors and the readers are the usual suspects.
I think the best source of income is from the government, or from
professional societies etc, so neither readers nor authors are charged
directly. (Yes, they pay taxes and membership fees for professional
societies, and that's fine, but there is no direct coupling, which could
lead to a conflict of interest.)

On Thu, 13 Oct 11 06, Phillip Helbig wrote:
I've just had a brief look; will put them on the list.

Bear in mind there is "The Open Astronomy Journal" which nominally
fills your requirements. Don't know about their impact factor or if
their publications make it onto NASA ADS.

http://www.benthamscience.com/open/toaaj/index.htm

If you find out anything interesting maybe you could share it here.

Eric Flesch

[Mod. note: it's a shame that they seem to have almost no general
articles and that at least one of their recent special issues is by
and for crackpots of the Electric Universe variety, containing
articles that wouldn't meet the moderation criteria here, never mind
get published in a reputable journal. Open-access journals ought to be
the way forward but there is a serious chicken-and-egg problem in
getting actual astronomers to publish in them. -- mjh]

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
I feel strongly that there are serious problems concerning the pricing
of academic journals and the amount of research money which goes into
their subscriptions.
[[...]]
If one
wants to do the right thing when submitting a paper, three criteria must
be fulfilled: 1) it should be readable by anyone without paying any fee;
2) it shouldn't cost the author to have it published (both because this
can exclude poor authors and because there is a temptation for journals
to print low-quality stuff as long as it is paid for); and 3) the author
should retain copyright, or at least officially be allowed to have a
copy of the paper at least on the arXiv, on a personal website and on an
institute website.

Are there any such journals?

Neither of these meet *all* of your criteria, but...

PLoS One is open-access and authors retain copyright. It reviews
papers for quality, but not fore originality. But it charges authors
(currently US$1,350); the the fee is waived on request for authors
lacking sufficient funds. It covers all areas of science, but my
impression is that it publishes relatively few papers in astronomy
and astrophysics (and correspondingly, such papers published there
might have relatively low visibility).

Physical Review X is open-access, authors retain copyright, and PRX
hopefully shares the high standards and excellent reputation of the
other Physical Review journals. PRX reviews papers for both quality
and originality. But it too has an author charge (currently US$1500);
the website does not mention individual fee waives, only a blanket
waiver for authors from Bangladesh and many countries of sub-Saharan
Africa.

[Conflict-of-interest disclosures:
* My spouse is an (unpaid) editor for PLoS One, although in a subject
area completely different from that of this newsgroup.
* I am an (unpaid) referee for another Physical Review journal.]

--
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]"
Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam

In article ,
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply wrote:
If one
wants to do the right thing when submitting a paper, three criteria must
be fulfilled: 1) it should be readable by anyone without paying any fee;
2) it shouldn't cost the author to have it published (both because this
can exclude poor authors and because there is a temptation for journals
to print low-quality stuff as long as it is paid for); and 3) the author
should retain copyright, or at least officially be allowed to have a
copy of the paper at least on the arXiv, on a personal website and on an
institute website.

If (2) and (3) are satisfied (as they are by several decent
astronomical journals, including MNRAS), is (1) necessary? I do a fair
amount of work from home at the moment and -- especially now that ADS
links to the arXiv version -- I very rarely find that I need to access
a paper through my institution's subscription, because free copies are
almost always available on the arXiv. In practice, the institutional
subscriptions (and the subsidy from other sources -- I don't know
offhand whether MNRAS is subsidised by the RAS fellowship) are a tax
on institutions (and people) doing astronomy which allow the journal
to keep operating, but which by now have very little connection to
moving articles from the writer to the reader.

Martin
--
Martin Hardcastle
School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, University of Hertfordshire, UK
Please replace the xxx.xxx.xxx in the header with herts.ac.uk to mail me

Originally Posted by Phillip Helbig---undress to reply

I feel strongly that there are serious problems concerning the pricing
of academic journals and the amount of research money which goes into
their subscriptions. In essence, authors donate their work (or
sometimes even pay money as well) to a company who then sells it back to
them. In the old days, there wasn't much choice, but these days, with
electronic versions of papers, there is a chance to break free. (Note
that the question of changing the refereeing system a) is a completely
separate question and b) not what I'm looking to discuss here.) If one
wants to do the right thing when submitting a paper, three criteria must
be fulfilled: 1) it should be readable by anyone without paying any fee;
2) it shouldn't cost the author to have it published (both because this
can exclude poor authors and because there is a temptation for journals
to print low-quality stuff as long as it is paid for); and 3) the author
should retain copyright, or at least officially be allowed to have a
copy of the paper at least on the arXiv, on a personal website and on an
institute website.

Are there any such journals?

For established scientists, these criteria are enough. For others,
there will be the additional requirement: proven quality.

In general, I believe papers written based on research that is funded by the public or federal government should be available to the public for free. We already paid and the authors of the research should have a free government funded medium for presenting the research.

Phillip Helbig---undress to reply;1179436 Wrote:
I feel strongly that there are serious problems concerning the pricing
of academic journals and the amount of research money which goes into
their subscriptions. In essence, authors donate their work (or
sometimes even pay money as well) to a company who then sells it back to
them. In the old days, there wasn't much choice, but these days, with
electronic versions of papers, there is a chance to break free. (Note
that the question of changing the refereeing system a) is a completely
separate question and b) not what I'm looking to discuss here.) If one
wants to do the right thing when submitting a paper, three criteria must

be fulfilled: 1) it should be readable by anyone without paying any fee;
2) it shouldn't cost the author to have it published (both because this
can exclude poor authors and because there is a temptation for journals
to print low-quality stuff as long as it is paid for); and 3) the author

should retain copyright, or at least officially be allowed to have a
copy of the paper at least on the arXiv, on a personal website and on an

institute website.

Are there any such journals?

For established scientists, these criteria are enough. For others,
there will be the additional requirement: proven quality.

In general, I believe papers written based on research that is funded by
the public or federal government should be available to the public for
free. We already paid and the authors of the research should have a
free government funded medium for presenting the research.




--
Jamahl Peavey

In article , Eric Flesch
writes:

Bear in mind there is "The Open Astronomy Journal" which nominally
fills your requirements. Don't know about their impact factor or if
their publications make it onto NASA ADS.

The first isn't so important (if at all); the latter is. Reputation is
also important; I wouldn't submit something to the JOURNAL OF COSMOLOGY
even if it met all the other criteria.

In article ,
Phillip Helbig---undress to reply writes:
I feel strongly that there are serious problems concerning the pricing
of academic journals and the amount of research money which goes into
their subscriptions.

The problem is, as you acknowledge in a followup, there are real
costs. There's the editorial cost of choosing papers and getting
them into publishable form (editing, refereeing, copy editing,
preparing online figures and data tables), the cost of typesetting if
you are producing paper copies (which libraries still demand), and
the cost of permanent archiving. (For most journals, the electronic
version, not the paper one, is considered definitive.) Reasonable
people can debate how large these costs should be, but there's a
definite link between cost and quality.

There are several models for how the costs can be covered. One is
Astronomy & Astrophysics, which is directly funded by the European
agencies. What I see in that journal is poorly-written papers, not
copy edited, and printed in a type size that's too small for me to
read easily. No doubt these problems could be mitigated if the
subsidy were larger, but if the agencies spent more on the journal,
they'd have less to spend on research grants.

The Astrophysical Journal follows a different model. Editorial and
archiving costs are covered by page charges, and typesetting costs
are covered by library subscriptions. I see a much higher quality
product overall, though copy editing suffered badly with the change
from UCP to IOP. On the other hand, costs went down, so maybe that's
a beneficial tradeoff.

ApJ and AJ (the AAS journals) are open access after one year, and
both allow authors to post preprints. They also waive page charges
for authors who have no research support.

All the above are non-profit models. There are also for-profit
journals, which are more expensive overall. I don't think for-
profit publication is a significant fraction of astronomy papers, but
it seems to be important in other fields.

Basically, the problem is that there's a more or less fixed total
research budget, and publication costs and publication costs have to
come out of it somehow. You can change the amount of money devoted
to publication, and you can arrange the funding pipeline in different
ways, but you won't get something you don't pay for.

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