Science’s Pirate Queen

Re:Science’s Pirate Queen by s0rce on Thursday February 08, 2018 @10:06PM (#16337603)

I don't think its right to say they add no value. They definitely don't add value anywhere near what they charge (clearly based on their profit margins) but they do provide a service (albeit often minor). They coordinate reviewers (who they don't compensate), certain journals (Nature and Science in my experience) provide typesetting and editorial service beyond just basic copyediting, they provide a website to download the content.

I'm in no way saying these services couldn't easily be replicated at a much lower/negligible cost but they do provide a service.

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Re:Science’s Pirate Queen by Mediterraneo10 on Friday February 09, 2018 @11:10AM (#16341292)

> They ... provide typesetting and editorial service beyond just basic copyediting.

Not necessarily. For-profit publishers today – perhaps more often than not – expect the unpaid volunteer editors of the journal to do any typesetting or copy-editing, and then just send the publisher a camera-ready PDF to print.

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Re:Science’s Pirate Queen by xamuel on Friday February 09, 2018 @09:43AM (#16340464)

Minor correction: many publishers don't even coordinate the reviewers. That's usually left to editors. Editors are generally unpaid, or are paid some trivial insignificant amount.

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Re:Science’s Pirate Queen by Fomite on Friday February 09, 2018 @01:00AM (#16338221)

Additionally, I am a member of several societies who have outsourced their journal publication to a commercial publisher, and who use the money from those contracts to pay for society activities like travel scholarships, etc.

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