• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Publishing in peer-reviewed journals

mijopaalmc

Philosopher
M
Joined
Mar 10, 2007
Messages
7,172
In general do journals charge a fee for publication, if an article passes their peer-review and editorial policies?
 
mijopaalmc said:
In general do journals charge a fee for publication, if an article passes their peer-review and editorial policies?
Click to expand...

Within physics: some do, some don't. Some charge only for, e.g., pages to be printed in color.

If you want to search for more info, these are called "page charges".
 
ben m said:
Within physics: some do, some don't. Some charge only for, e.g., pages to be printed in color.

If you want to search for more info, these are called "page charges".
Click to expand...

Academic affiliation is also in general not required?
 
Most journal do.
They don't require an academic affiliation, but, at least in 'hard sciences', it is all but impossible to conduct any serious research without some serious backing. Between the very specialized equipment and reagents, we are easily talking tenth of thousands of dollars here, without even considering the salaries.
Compare to that the cost of publishing ($75 a page for the journal I checked earlier today) is pretty insignificant.
 
In psych, it's very rare to pay to publish, and in fact suspicious. In other areas it seems much more common (economics is one that comes to mind).
 
In medicine and the biological science, it is rare to ever pay to publish. In fact a journal that charges exorbitant fees are rarely "peer-reviewed" and very suspect.
 
In marine sciences journals only charge for the pages that need to be in colour. It would be quite suspicious to be expected to pay to publish, and in general I tend to distrust the review policies of those journals...
 
Some American Chemical Society journals have page charges; but they wave them if the author says money is tight.
 
Most peer-reviewed journals, at least the larger more well-respected medical ones, are rife with advertisements. This is what offsets the cost of publishing.

I've never had to pay to have a peer-reviewed article published that I've either personally written or have had my name on as part of a study group.

~Dr. Imago
 
Huh. So astronomy is looking like the odd man out: most of the top journals (ApJ, Ap J Letters, AstroJ, A&A, PASP) have page charges.

Maybe it's a function of the size of the field. Most journals have to pay for their staff, printing, and distribution via either (a) library subscriptions or (b) page charges. There simply aren't enough astro institutions out there to support the whole ApJ enterprise via subscription fees alone, hence the page charges.

It's a perfectly reasonable system, IMO. A journal provides a valuable service to the community. Page charges make sure that most of the costs are borne by the most-active researchers, whereas library fees would force (say) Williams to support the same fraction of the journal's activities that (say) MIT does.
 
I think the concern with page charges is that it enters money into the question of whether a paper is going to be published or not. Say a journal charges $75 per page, with peer review. Can I get them to forego peer review for $100 per page and keep that a secret?
 
wackyvorlon said:
I think the concern with page charges is that it enters money into the question of whether a paper is going to be published or not. Say a journal charges $75 per page, with peer review. Can I get them to forego peer review for $100 per page and keep that a secret?
Click to expand...

I think you might have mistaken page charges for publication fees. Page charges (and I had to pay some) refer in general to the amount you pay to have a colour figure in your article. Nothing suspicious about that.

I tend to agree with your sentiment as it applies to publication fees. That and the sheer outrage of the matter: I do the work, write the article, some anonymous reviewers review it for free, I format the whole thing and on top I have to pay for it... not for me, tyvm...
 
Megalodon said:
I think you might have mistaken page charges for publication fees. Page charges (and I had to pay some) refer in general to the amount you pay to have a colour figure in your article. Nothing suspicious about that.

I tend to agree with your sentiment as it applies to publication fees. That and the sheer outrage of the matter: I do the work, write the article, some anonymous reviewers review it for free, I format the whole thing and on top I have to pay for it... not for me, tyvm...
Click to expand...

So do most of the prestigious, high-impact journals not have publication fees?
 
mijopaalmc said:
So do most of the prestigious, high-impact journals not have publication fees?
Click to expand...

It depends on the field.

Physics: Phys Rev Letters, charges for color figures.
Astro: Astrophysical Journal Letters, ~$100 per page.
Biology: Nature or Science, no charges AFAIK.
 
mijopaalmc said:
In general do journals charge a fee for publication, if an article passes their peer-review and editorial policies?
Click to expand...

The new journals PLoS (Public Library of Science) have a substantial page charge. Their innovation is that the paper is available free online immediately.

NIH is requiring sponsored research to be freely available online, but there is likely to be a delay after publication to allow the journal to sell subscriptions for immediate access.
 
Yeah, being in astronomy, I thought page charges were the norm. But ApJ and the like don't have advertisements, right? I can honestly say I've only ever used the online versions.

In my few cases of publication so far, the institution at which I was doing the research picked up the page charges. I think you can also use your own grants for that?
 
ben m said:
I can't remember the last time I saw a paper copy! I don't think they have ads.
Click to expand...

The download is available through your University library subscription, right?

John Q Public would have to pay a charge or go through the library.
 
MervinFerd said:
The download is available through your University library subscription, right?

John Q Public would have to pay a charge or go through the library.
Click to expand...

That's right. But as ben m points out, there are substantial costs to running a journal, which have to be covered by page charges and subscriptions. And the astronomy journals that I'm talking about are not-for-profit. It will be interesting to see if costs drop in the future if they do eventually abandon the paper journal and go online only.

Now, many of us also post our papers, once accepted by a major journal, on astro-ph, which is freely available to everyone. astro-ph itself is not peer-reviewed, but it is a great place to find such work, as well as non-peer-reviewed work, such as lecture notes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom