In a well-reasoned blog post, Tim Gowers rekindled the debate on author-pay (or as he prefers to call them: “article processing charge”) journals, while participating in founding a new such one. (These are academic journals in which the authors or their institutions need to pay the journal to publish their academic article.) While being explicit about preferring a more “modern” approach, such as a new overlay journal system in which he is also participating, he argues that the author pay model (ok, APC for “article processing charge”) is a useful step in the right direction. Gowers makes a good case showing how safe guards are in place to ensure that financial matters do not interfere with academic ones, arguing that the total financial cost or a paper to the mathematical community will be much smaller, and that access will be better.
As convincing as the arguments showing that this type of journal is “useful”, my own feeling remained at the level of “it is just plain wrong” and “morally repugnant” which Gowers pointed out cannot be an argument as of itself but may only be a conclusion from other arguments. I see two types of arguments behind this feeling. The first type is a “consider the equilibrium” argument which would argue that the natural tendency of APC models would be to evolve in ways that “follow the money” reaching “vanity press” levels. The second argument is my reaction to the following argument he makes:
As I think everybody agrees, now that we have the internet, the main function left for journals is providing a stamp of quality…. If you feel that APCs are wrong because if anything you as an author should be paid for the wonderful research you have done, I would counter that (i) it is not journals who should be paying you — they are helping you to promote yourself, and (ii) if your research is good, then you will be rewarded for it, by having a better career than you would have had without it.
Undoubtedly, true. We all know that. Many of us do publish in journals mostly to get the line in the CV, and then get positions or promotions or grants or such. This may be “the way of the world” and may even be unavoidable in some form. But, but, but, this is the “dark side” of academic life; this is the cost of the academic business; it is something that we should try to mitigate not to encourage; to be embarrassed of, not proud of. Author-pay models put this dark side on a pedestal and shout to the whole world that we publish in journals not as to let others benefit from our work but rather to advance ourselves. This may be useful, but repugnant.
This reminds me of a joke and a saying.
The joke goes like this: “Look at this guy, he’s peeing in the public swimming pool!” says a shocked observer to his friend. “But everyone does” replies the other. “Yes, but from the springboard?”.
The Talmud says that “Everyone knows why a bride enters the bridal chamber.” Still the Talmud — and most societies — dictates that we not make this too explicit.
I won’t opine here whether publishing for the line in your CV is like peeing in a swimming pool or like having marital sex. Nor do I have a strong opinion whether author-pay journals are more or less harmful than the current breed, but I do think that they are more repugnant.
Turing's Invisible Hand 
Hi, I concur with your statement that the APC scheme is morally repugnant. As Professor Michael Sandel would say, this is an instance of market intrusion into spheres of life formerly governed by non-market norms. This is in my opinion going to lead to even more extensive corruption in academia, destroying what is left of the useful norms which are essential to the integrity of scientific endeavours.
I completely disagree. As I noted here, we are already in an “author pay” model, since authors (or their institutions) already pay tens of thousands of dollars to actually do the research (not to mention that even the cost of the work to write it up, format it for publication etc.. is more than the cost of these “article processing charges”).
The reason we are not in a “vanity press” model now, and won’t be there in the “author pays” model, is that unlike book authors, scientists do not work for royalties from their publications. Scientists are paid to create and disseminate knowledge, and I don’t see anything repugnant if the institutions or funding agencies that are already paying so much to conduct the research, pay a little more to ensure that it has the maximum benefit to society by being publicly accessible in the best form.
I am sure that just as there are junk journals and conferences now, there will be (or already are) such journals in the author-pays model. But I highly doubt that the forum of mathematics (or any of the journals respectable scientists publish in) will devolve into such a junk journal.
Just to clarify, it’s not that the “author-pays”/APC model is my favorite model- like Gowers, I prefer the more “modern” approach of drastically reduced operating costs that are covered by a direct grant to the journal. I just disagree with calling the former model “repugnant”.
I really would not be so concerned if the same funding bodies that pay our salaries and grants, decided to fork a little of that money to journals.
My main problem is that the academic publication culture is becoming more and more geared to satisfy the promotion needs of the writers rather than the information needs of the readers.
In this respect, yes, very large parts of the current system are already in a vanity press state, and the APC model is just another brick in the wall.
Without taking a position on the issue, I’d like to mention that a system where the author needs to fork out $1000+ for the right to publish is very much alive and kicking in computer science. I am referring to conferences. Very few conferences, even in theoretical computer science, are OK with publishing a paper in proceedings without having at least one of the authors presenting at the conference.
I, too, am troubled by an author pays model. The biggest issue for me is the inequality of ability of authors to pay. Though, as Boaz points out, the biggest cost is in the production of the research, those costs probably also correlate with ability to pay. If author contributions were optional like old page charges (something that NSF grants used to cover before my time) then it would handle the inequality and avoid some of Noam’s concern, I think. Paying these would be more a contribution to society (like reviewing papers) rather than vanity.
Whoever pays, another concern is the suitability of the costs involved. Is it appropriate to pay for web hosting/distribution? archiving? indexing? copy editors? printers? editors-in-chief? editors? reviewers? .. and, if so, how much? (The costs for editors and reviewers are essential – except for venues like the arxiv – though generally entirely borne by the editors and reviewers themselves.) The worst excesses of journal publishing have in part involved a gold-plated view of what these costs should be but I am also concerned about a “race to the bottom” mentality that comes from a too simplistic view of publication.
Conferences publications really are different beasts. While conferences do have costs, those costs almost entirely cover aspects other than the publication itself and they pay for things that provide significant auxiliary benefit both to the author and to the community. Sometimes, such as for STOC, there are also mechanisms for financial support for some of those least able to afford to attend.
My model of publishing is that it is a community activity, not just an activity of the authors involved and hence the best mode involves community financial and volunteer support. This is why in general I am a fan of society journals where there is a community incentive to moderate costs. (We are currently at a difficult stage for some societies as fixed costs of print journals with markedly decreased subscriptions have become a financial drag that is limiting flexibility and openness, but this should be temporary.) I am also a fan of volunteer efforts like Theory of Computing, though it seems critical that these be put on stable foundations that will obviously last for decades and more, not just the next few years. Official non-profit status like that of JAIR, which can accept donations including corporate ones, would be particularly useful in this stability.
Re: Conferences publications really are different beasts….
I agree that conferences do provide an auxiliary benefit (or a burden – going to a conference might or might not be a plus, depending on the situation). Still, the basic model is the same: one needs to pay in order to publish/present. And, mechanisms for financial support could be employed in paid journals as well.
For completeness, I am agnostic regarding the “pay to publish” model. One issue that bothers me about this model though is the transition period. It is not obvious to me that all funding agencies would immediately agree to cover the publishing costs from grants. And even if it was true in the US or Europe, it might be not the case for the “developing world”, where $1000 fee could be a real obstacle.
I think that in conferences you can see the whole range: from excellent conferences that get most of their fees from people coming to *listen* to the talks (in which case one can rather safely say that the authors of papers presented there are not paying to publish but rather to attend), to pretty bad ones to which no one goes to listen to the talks but rather only to present a paper. In this latter case, we are indeed getting close to the author pay model, but still, as Paul explains, not as close as the APC model is.
I agree that a good publication venue (conference or journal) should benefit the public at large rather the authors. I just don’t think that the way you measure the benefit is by the number of paying customers. Also, given all the “ability-to-pay blind” safeguards that Gowers outlined in his post, it’s not really a step in the direction of author-focused rather than audience-focused publications. If anything, by enabling open access, it increases the benefit to the public.
Barak says: “since authors (*or their institutions*) already pay tens of thousands of dollars to actually do the research”.
No, it’s not “or” their institutions. It’s *only* the institutions who pay for journals now. The Author-Pays models merely suggests that researchers should now be using their research budgets on journal publications, covering for their institutions.
Again: instead of the *institute’s* money to cover these expenses, the Authors-Pay model aims at making us, the researchers, pay even more from our *own* grants, while our institute’s budgets will be saved.
I think this is totally unproductive for scientists. (Surely, if I was an administrative figure I’d be glad at the suggestion…).
I wouldn’t call it an “author-pay” model at all, actually. That name brings up misleading associations with vanity presses and sometimes suggests to people that authors might be asked to pay from their own personal funds (while no ethical journal would ask that). The APC terminology describes the model better: there is a cost per article, which must be paid somehow, but there is no implication that authors are the ones paying, and in fact they won’t be.
What I hope will happen is a consortium (the analogue of SCOAP^3 in particle physics; see http://scoap3.org/) will pay all the APCs for a large collection of journals. This consortium would be made up of research universities, industrial labs, and funding agencies. Given that particle physics can make this work, other fields should be able to as well. Then we won’t need to worry about APCs at all, since they will all be taken care of by the consortium behind the scenes.
To the extent journals are not covered by these consortia, APCs will be paid from grants or from institutional funds (i.e., libraries), with fee waivers for anyone without access to this funding.
Out of these four possibilities (consortia, grants, libraries, waivers), only grants could possibly be considered “author pays”, and I think they are much better described as “funding agency pays”. Funding agencies have a powerful incentive to make the work they fund widely available, and in the future I expect them to require open access and to commit to paying APCs. They ought to pay APCs as part of the overhead on the grant, since the overhead was partially intended to fund libraries in the first place. Failing that, they should provide dedicated funds. Of course I can’t promise they will all do this, but in any case, if a funding agency supplies a grant with an open access mandate and says the grant should be used to pay any necessary APCs, then that’s pretty clearly “funding agency pays”.
Most funding agencies don’t have OA mandates yet, so there will be a transition period of at least a few years, but in the long run I expect APCs to be a “someone else pays” model, not “author pays”. It’s the same way subscription journals could be described as “reader pays”, but in practice are “library pays”, which feels very different.
The next morning Tom arrived at work to continue designing his website when Harry called and said, “Silly tortoise, you should never try to outdo a rabbit. Idea of a majestic tool nobody can find? Little Pig built a mud house.