[ehsankia]

But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

Also, as you mention, newcomers need the reputation given to them by journal, but I don't understand how this is a stable system. In theory, well established scientists, who give the journals its reputation, should be able to easily migrate to an open journal, and therefore make the whole system collapse, no? Do these large publication have any sort of deal to give big researchers on their journals?

[Vinnl]

No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution. Often, they'll even have to pay to publish ("page charges", charges for illustrations, etc.), and also to make it openly accessible (although to be fair, at that point their works aren't sold anymore; the author's payment is the source of profit).

Even established, tenured scientists will often need to obtain grants and will still be judged by where they publish. Though there's also, of course, quite some institutional inertia and people just not caring, since it doesn't affect them personally. And of course, there are also a lot of (established) academics who do care.

[jonas21]

In addition, established scientists are rarely the first author on papers. It's usually a grad student or postdoc who does most of the work and gets first authorship. A publication in a top journal can literally make or break their career.

If someone decides that their group won't publish in top journals, they're hurting their own students, which probably discourages people from doing so.

[Vinnl]

Yep, excellent addition!

[ehsankia]

> No, scientists get paid (usually) by their institution

I didn't say they get paid, I'm talking specifically amount the money flow to these journals. Does the funding from the research/scientists come from the profit the journals make, or from outside funding?

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Usually grants or other funding sources: journals generally don’t pay for articles.

[Vinnl]

Ah sorry, I misunderstood. Often they're indirectly government-funded - for example, in the Netherlands we have the NWO ("Dutch organisation for scientific research"), which distributes government money to researchers and institutions. In the US you have e.g. the NIH. Additionally, there are private funds like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

Funding flows from those organisations to the researchers, and from the researchers to the publishers. And from the publishers to their shareholders.

[kergonath]

> But even compared to other publishing, like books. From my experience books sell for less (both paperback and e-book), and also a significant chunk of it goes to the author. Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

One data point: we were 3 authors who worked for several months on a chapter of an authoritative book in our field. We got €100 to split. Of course, we get fuck all for our papers.

[azalemeth]

> Do scientist get any of the profit from paper sales?

No. And most of the time, if you want a paper that's behind a paywall, email the corresponding author and they'd be delighted to know that someone on the planet actually cares, and then email you a pdf, copyright be damned.

Honestly, sci-hub is the best website of the last decade; I use it every day. It works better than the publishers' websites (that I have legitimate access to). It's just excellent. It's founder should be made a saint.

[Shorel]

> copyright be damned

What? Do the journals get copyright over the authors too???

[elcritch]

Often yes they do get assigned the copyright for the article.

[azalemeth]

Indeed. The horrible phrase is 'copyright transfer agreement', which is typically a condition of being published. My experience is that the better journals are more of an arse about copyright. I've just written two book chapters and spent maybe a day getting permissions to reuse published figures, sometimes including my own (!) in other works.

[betterunix2]

On the other hand, publishers have very little power when it comes to enforcing their copyrights when the author of an article decides to make it available on their personal web page. I have never met a researcher who refused to provide a copy of a paper when asked, despite technically violating a copyright by doing so. Academic publishers know that if they start threatening researchers they are playing with fire -- their business model is already obsolete and is only kept alive by institutional inertia, and the last thing they want is for researchers to find the motivation needed to ditch the publishing companies (the technology is widely available, now it is just a problem of politics and of organizing a community to change).

[daxelrod]

Some journals’ copyright assignments have explicit carve-outs for authors to distribute their own work.

[ghaff]

>also a significant chunk of it goes to the author.

Many (most?) books through publishers don't earn out their advance which is probably low 4 figures in most cases. In practice, writing books is either a hobby or it's a reputational side-gig for you day job whether self-employed or employed by some organization.