Dear colleagues,
It’s all fine and well with me, academic publishers should by all means continue to earn profit and become fatter and fatter. However,
once again I have to ask the question: where is my money? Sure I know there are costs also for e-publications, but I don’t understand why, in all this, authors are the only one who don’t get paid for their work. I want my money, mates! That’s all I’m saying
to scientific publishers. If they are making a profit out of my work and I don’t, there are two options—which unfortunately, are not mutually exclusive: either scientific publishers are slavers or I’m a dupe.
In a very broad generalization, there are two ways to increase profit for any type of company: innovation or cutting down the costs
of labour. Basically like any other big corporation, big scientific publishers are going down the second path and in order to make profit not only they exploit our labour, but also public funding, since libraries have to pay hefty fees for journals. To make
things worse, we are complacent, as Dan Lusthaus correctly points out, or even grateful sometimes. This article (thanks to Andrew Ollett for reminding me of it) explains it very well:
This is a very telling passage from it (cursive mine): “In order to make money, a traditional publisher – say, a magazine – first has
to cover a multitude of costs: it pays writers for the articles; it employs editors to commission, shape and check the articles; and it pays to distribute the finished product to subscribers and retailers. All of this is expensive, and successful magazines
typically make profits of around 12-15%. The way to make money from a scientific article looks very similar, except that scientific publishers manage to duck most of the actual costs.”
One of the costs they duck is to pay us for our work. Try and ask a famous author of fiction not only to write her or his novel for
free, but also to have to pay to read it once published and then you’ll hear how the answers sounds. My educated guess is that it will probably sound like a raspberry.
Best wishes,
Camillo
Dr Camillo A. Formigatti
John Clay Sanskrit Librarian
Bodleian Libraries
The Weston Library
Broad Street, Oxford
OX1 3BG
Email:
camillo.formigatti@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
Tel. (office): 01865 (2)77208
www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk
GROW YOUR MIND
in Oxford University’s
Gardens, Libraries and Museums
From: Jonathan Silk [mailto:kauzeya@gmail.com]
Sent: 27 March 2019 23:04
To: Dan Lusthaus <prajnapti@gmail.com>
Cc: Indology <indology@list.indology.info>
Subject: Re: [INDOLOGY] question about a soliciation from publisher MDPI
Dear Dan
I hope I am not seen as a shill for publishers, but I would like to point out that what you say is not quite right. How are contributions to be found? How is their continued presence to be assured? How are materials to be distributed? There
are many more questions like this that your brief explanation omits, but that are vital. All of us have experienced multiple times a 404 message when following a link to an article or contribution of interest. If we want our publications to last, this is not
a viable model. This statement is not a positive assertion of what is in fact the optimal model, but it does point out a weakness in your questioning. I think that there are some viable options out there, but it's not nearly as simple as you suggest.
Jonathan
On Wed, Mar 27, 2019 at 7:11 PM Dan Lusthaus via INDOLOGY <indology@list.indology.info> wrote: