[Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit

[John Grehan]

And how much of the $ should go to reviewers? If its good enough for
publishers to get money either from the public purse or charging authors,
then it should be good enough that reviewers get paid as well?

John Grehan

On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 4:01 PM, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> PS: A big advantage of my proposal (below) is that then authors without
> funding could not only still afford to publish, but their publications
> would also be open access! Effectively, open publication of taxonomy would
> be publicly funded. Sounds perfect to me!
>
> Stephen
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Wed, 20/1/16, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
>  To: "Taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>, "Daniel Mietchen" <
> daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com>
>  Received: Wednesday, 20 January, 2016, 9:26 AM
>
>  So, here's a thought: why not let
>  publishers apply for funding directly to publish open
>  access? It amounts to the same thing, if everything is above
>  board and is what it seems to be. Somehow though, I can't
>  quite see that happening ...
>
>  Stephen
>
>
>  --------------------------------------------
>  On Mon, 18/1/16, Daniel Mietchen <daniel.mietchen at googlemail.com>
>  wrote:
>
>   Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Paywall our taxonomic tidbit
>   To: "Taxacom" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
>   Received: Monday, 18 January, 2016, 3:47 PM
>
>   It may be worth considering here that
>   in the current system, billions
>   of dollars are going to the publishing industry every year
>   already
>   (globally, and across all disciplines), and have been
>  doing
>   so for
>   many years.
>
>   From http://doi.org/10.1038/495426a : "Data
>  from the
>   consulting firm
>   Outsell in Burlingame, California, suggest that the
>   science-publishing
>   industry generated $9.4 billion in revenue in 2011 and
>   published
>   around 1.8 million English-language articles — an
>  average
>   revenue per
>   article of roughly $5,000. Analysts estimate profit
>  margins
>   at 20–30%
>   for the industry, so the average cost to the publisher of
>   producing an
>   article is likely to be around $3,500–4,000."
>
>   Most of this is through subscriptions (by libraries,
>   corporations or
>   individuals), some of it through advertising, some from
>   other sources
>   (e.g. database access, membership schemes). Most of this
>  is
>   invisible
>   to most researchers, the exceptions being things like page
>   charges or
>   color figure charges in traditional venues or OA fees more
>   recently.
>
>   Now consider a thought experiment: If every single one of
>   the ca. 2
>   million articles we publish every year would be published
>   for an OA
>   fee in the PLOS ONE range (ca. USD 1,500), that would cost
>   USD 3
>   billion altogether, which is roughly the amount of
>  *profit*
>   the
>   publishing industry is making now.
>
>   While many traditional publishers (and especially their
>   hybrid
>   journals) hover well above those 1,500 dollars, many newer
>   ones have
>   OA fees well below that, often due to more efficient
>   workflows. So if
>   OA at the efficiency of PLOS ONE or better were to replace
>   the
>   traditional publishing model, this would mean significant
>   savings
>   (billions per year eventually) for the scientific
>  community
>   - and thus
>   the public - which we could use to build an infrastructure
>   that would
>   make scholarly communication more efficient, to include
>   things beyond
>   PDF and discovery mechanisms beyond citations and journal
>   TOC alerts.
>
>   Besides, the educational value of a paywall to lay readers
>   interested
>   in taxonomy rarely tops that of a relevant OA paper.
>
>   Daniel
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>