[MichaelSalib]

On the other hand, a well run, professionally edited journal costs money to produce.

Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia?

As I understand it, editors generally work for free. Reviewers generally work for free. Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing. Heck, authors generally supply their work already typeset. So what exactly is the cost here? I mean, I'm sure that IEEE/ACM have a staff that is used to getting paid, but what value are they adding if all the skilled labor is done for free by the community and all the technical wrangling is done by authors themselves?

[drallison]

There are different kinds of journals and so the costs and benefits can differ widely. Academic archival journals typically have volunteer editors whose salary is paid for by their employer rather than the publisher (usually a non-profit society such as ACM). These editors manage the peer-review and acceptance process. Once the papers have been accepted, they go into production and, depending upon the journal and its goals, they may be subject to simple editing for mark-up and obvious spelling/grammatical errors or they may be carefully edited to improve presentation, style, and content. Professional editing greatly enhances the quality and readability of every author's work. This is the traditional publications model used by professional societies. I have no idea what the relative costs are relative to a Wikipedia-style journal with a totally volunteer staff. What I do know is that the amount of human effort that goes into such a quality journal is significant and that no matter what the infrastructure is, someone has to put in that time, and their efforts should be compensated in some fashion.

[MichaelSalib]

I think it helps to distinguish different types of costs. If we're talking about general technical writing editing or assistance getting something latex-ified, that seems like the kind of thing that can be readily pushed back onto authors themselves. For example, the volunteer editor could easily tell an author: "the reviewers loved your work, but you need a technical editor to make this acceptable for publication: hire one, get it fixed up, and submit it in 2 weeks if you want it published". The same thing could be done for Latex help.

From an author's perspective, paying for a tech writer to help them edit would only need to be done if they're actually bad at writing, in which case it seems perfectly fair to have them spend a few hundred dollars paying a local editor to help get their work publishable. The net financial benefit to having another published paper on their CV is certainly worth far more than whatever a good tech writer would charge.

[rick_2047]

I think what you are suggesting here is already being done. I don't have much experience but from what I hear you are required to submit a "Camera Ready" copy of your submission after you have been excepted. That would mean a well formatted and edited work.

[chalst]

It's common to ask authors to have their articles edited at their own expense.

[bedris]

In addition, professionally edited journals frequently have feature/news stories and research highlights, which require staff to select relevant topics and to write and edit the articles. Also, journals can have advertisements for products or for open academic and faculty positions, which require curation and communication with the entities posting the products for sale or jobs for hire. These things require money in the form of paying staff.

[caf]

Well, if those feature/news stories and research highlight articles can't economically stand on their own, then perhaps they're not a good use of resources and shouldn't be produced?

And if the advertisements aren't bringing in at least enough revenue to cover their own costs, then they shouldn't be included either.

[neutronicus]

Authors either work for free or pay for the privilege of publishing.

I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals.

Does it cost more money to produce than Wikipedia?

The difference being that there are only 4 or 5 people in the world capable of producing or verifying the articles that appear in scientific journal.

[MichaelSalib]

I don't know where you get this.

From publishing an article in an IEEE journal? I mean, I did DARPA funded work in grad school and got it published in a journal. I understand very well that authors are generally paid. My point remains: they are not paid BY THE JOURNAL. From the journal's perspective, authors do not cost them anything.

The difference being that there are only 4 or 5 people in the world capable of producing or verifying the articles that appear in scientific journal.

And academic journals generally don't pay them a damn thing.

[streptomycin]

It's expensive to run a journal. PLoS isn't evil, but they still spend millions of dollars every year http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7096/full/441914a...

[chalst]

Other scholarly societies have very small overheads.

[pbiggar]

> I don't know where you get this. IEEE/ACM may not be paying them, but they are sure as hell getting paid to write the papers that go in those journals.

I'd like to know where you get this. ACM is paying nobody for writing papers. (I've published in ACM journals and conferences, btw).