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PHD-DESIGN  December 2017

PHD-DESIGN December 2017

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Subject:

Journal Editorships, Journal profitability, and payment to editors

From:

Don Norman <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Sat, 2 Dec 2017 07:53:05 -0800

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

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text/plain (123 lines)

Changing the subject line because this is now about editorships in general,
not about one journal or company.


A few hundred years ago, I did considerable work for journals: I was Editor
of Cognitive Science and Associate editor of numerous others, all of which
had significant workloads. (I still seem to be on more editorial boards
than i can enumerate.)

I was never paid. And the University did not reduce my workload.
--
One of my colleagues (and mentor) was Editor of Psychological Review
(Psychology's most prestigious journal) at the same time I was editor of
Cognitive Science. He received some payment, which allowed him to hire a
secretary to help. At that time, Psych Review had more submissions than Cog
Sci, but also Psych rev had a large subscription base, it was published by
the American Psychological Association -- a non-profit.  Cog Sci was young,
so it had a small subscription base, and it was published by a commercial
publisher (Ablex-- which no longer exists).  In other words, APA had a lot
more money than Ablex/Cog Sci.

We all assumed that Journal editorship was a worthwhile activity, both as
service to the professional community (and also because it helped get
promotions).

(As a side note: for most authors of books, the amount of income from the
book is tiny, but it pays back the author by increased promotions, both in
magnitude and in the rate of promotion).


==
Today things are different. Many academic editors need to be paid.
However, the other half of the story is that Journals are in financial
trouble. The commercially published ones have raised their rates to
extravagant amounts. The others have to skimp, not just in what they can
afford to pay academic editors, but even in their professional staff: there
are fewer editors and proofreaders in the editorial offices of journals.
Some journals are subsidized by societies or by universities.

I just met with the UCSD Head Librarian who said that eventually, she
thinks only the libraries will purchase journals. Everyone else will read
them free. Print journals are becoming obsolete.

However, the major cost of a journal is editorial: refereeing, keeping
track of the articles and reviews, requesting revisions, etc. Then there is
typesetting (even for electronic journals) -- although many book publishers
no require the authors to submit final copy. Many conference proceedings
(which is some fields have completely replaced Journals (e.g., computer
science, human-computer interaction, etc.) require camera-ready
submissions.  And the compilation of all accepted papers onto a Memory
Stick is paid for by conference fees.

Take a look at PLOS (Public Library of Science).   https://www.plos.org/

These are truly excellent, high-quality journals. Is PLOS the future of
publishing?  How do they get enough money to survive? They charge authors
(paper acceptance is completely separate from payment. If authors cannot
afford to pay, they provide mechanisms to help. Ther payment is NOT to
guarantee acceptance: it is to defray editorial costs.   They say:

https://www.plos.org/publication-fees
Publication Fees
PLOS publication fees are fixed and independent of article page length. If
you need assistance, there are many resources and initiatives available.
PLOS offsets publication expenses – including those of peer review
management, journal production and online hosting and archiving – by
charging a publication fee, also known as an Article Processing Charge
(APC), to authors, institutions or funders for each article published.



---

THIS IS A DESIGN PROBLEM

What is the future of scholarly publication? How can we assure quality
standards?  (Double-blind peer review  is today's standard, but peer review
has many, many problems.)

And what of the academics stuck with the extremely high workload of being
an unpaid (or even if paid, a very poorly paid) editor.

There have been numerous conferences, workshops, and white papers devoted
to this topic.

Nobody has the answer.  So far, the major ways are:


   - Large organizations use their dues to pay for publication of their
   journals
   - Large conference use admission fees to pay for electronic publication
   of papers (and in many fields, journals have mostly disappeared) (Note that
   although conferences are highly refereed, the end quality of the papers is
   inferior to those in journals, primarily because they do not go through
   several cycles of critiques and revision.)
   - Journals are increasingly asking authors to pay for publication -- the
   America  Institute of Physics has done this for decades. (In other words,
   very highly-regarded journals do this: see http://www.scitation.org/about
   )
   - I have published in one of their journals (JASA: Journal of the
      Acoustical Society of America).  Here is their payment statement:
      http://asa.scitation.org/jas/authors/charges
      http://asa.scitation.org/jas/authors/charges


what is the answer for a relatively small and poor field like Design?

Unclear.   Physicists and engineers and most sciences are relatively
wealthy: research grant proposals almost always contain a line item on the
budget for publication charges. Most designers do not have this source of
income.  Similarly, our academic societies are poor. (Our professional
societies have a lot more money, but they do not publish (or even
understand) academic papers.

Don


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