In yesterday's post I mentioned that I wanted to use spring break to make progress on various writing and research projects.
One of those projects is based on one of the Darwin Day talks I gave in February, in which I discussed some of the mathematical arguments used by anti-evolutionists. In my preparations I gathered together far more material than I could possibly include in the talk itself, so I thought I would turn it all into a proper article. The title would be something like, “The Evolution Of Anti-Evolutionary Mathematics.” Partly the intent would be to gather together and refute the main lines of mathematical argument offered by anti-evolutionists, but I have somewhat more in mind. I want to trace out the way these arguments have evolved over time. For example, in looking at arguments based on probability theory we could begin with the very naive YEC style arguments about calculating the probability of creating a given DNA sequence by chance, then move on to Dembski's use of info-jargon in an attempt to improve the argument, and perhaps culminate with Behe's Edge of Evolution calculations. I think you can trace a similar development in the arguments based on the NFL theorems or thermodynamics.
Then I would point out some flaws common to all of these claims, talk a bit about mathematical modelling more generally, and perhaps contrast the anti-evolution arguments with the way mathematics actually gets deployed in evolutionary biology. Tie it all together with some anecdotes from my Among the Creationists days to show how rhetorically powerful these arguments are, and I think that could be an interesting article.
If I ever write my “Math and God” book, that would be one chapter.
Of course, as an academic it's in my bones that after formulating an idea for a paper I immediately start thinking about where to send it. I could think of several possible venues, but the first one to come to mind was the Springer journal Evolution: Education and Outreach. Seems like it's right up their alley. I have often benefited from reading articles that were published there, so I rather liked the idea of publishing something there myself.
I started browsing the website, focusing on the journal's Aims and Scope, and paying particular attention to the instructions for authors. That's when I came across this:
Open access publishing is not without costs. Evolution: Education and Outreach therefore levies an article-processing charge of £1045/$1635/€1330 for each article accepted for publication. If the submitting author's institution is a Member, the cost of the article-processing charge is covered by the membership, and no further charge is payable. In the case of authors whose institutions are Supporter Members, however, a discounted article-processing charge is payable by the author. We routinely waive charges for authors from low-income countries. For other countries, article-processing charge waivers or discounts are granted on a case-by-case basis to authors with insufficient funds. Authors can request a waiver or discount during the submission process. For further details, see our article-processing charge page.
I thought I must have read that wrong. Sixteen hundred dollars is a lot of money. So much, in fact, that I would think that not many college professors could afford to pay it. And even if I did have that kind of money lying around, it would have to be a mighty prestigious journal before I would consider paying such a charge a sensible way of spending it.
I followed the link to the “article-processing charge” page. That business about members not having to pay seemed like an important point. After all, with more traditional journals you're counting on your institution to pay for an expensive subscription. It turns out, though, that in the United States there are a mere 167 member institutions (out of more than 2500 four-year institutions and quite a few more two-year institutions). Most of those institutions are mere “supporting members,” which apparently only gets you a fifteen percent discount. That still leaves authors well over a thousand dollars in the hole.
So I sent an e-mail to the editorial office asking if most authors pay this charge out of pocket. I still find it simply incredible--seriously, who has that kind of money? I suspect I'm relatively flush compared to many potential authors, but even I blanche at the thought of writing such a big check. What about graduate students or post-docs? What about more prolific faculty members--are they paying sixteen hundred dollars a pop? The website mentions the possibility of waivers, but unless everyone gets one I am still puzzled.
The editorial office replied quickly, and I thank them for that. Alas, they did not answer my question. Instead they simply repeated the same information I found at the website without clarifying anything.
Maybe I'm naïve. I've mostly been writing books over the last several years, so maybe I've lost track of what journals are up to nowadays. Are article-processing charges of this magnitude typical? Are authors routinely paying so much just to see their work in print?
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This is still pretty unusual in pure mathematics publishing, but I've seen the idea creeping in recently. For example, and forgive me if I have the details wrong, I think some of the open access publishing ventures being pushed by Tim Gowers and compatriots have a similar model, though I don't know the exact prices. The overall idea is to get libraries paying these kinds of costs instead of subscription fees, but in the meantime, when I asked our librarians if the university would pay such charges, I just got a big shrug.
Don't know about your area of course, but our policy is to mostly use traditional reader-pays journals unless there is a specific reason not to. Most of the arguments of the open access crowd do not really convince me.
Obscene profits of some publishers? True, but reader-pays is not really the problem there; one could, given the political will, simply turn the publishers into non-profit utilities, and as one sees from your example the usual suspects will have their profits under any system.
Poor readers cannot access the information? Well, under open access poor authors cannot publish. And even now all you have to do to get one of my papers is to send me an e-mail.
Nowadays, open access journals (at least in biological sciences) commonly use the "authors-pay" model and often the fees start above 1000$ (sometimes it is much more).
Yes this is standard in open access publishing. PLoS is even more expensive: http://www.plos.org/publications/publication-fees/
There are also plenty of closed access journals with high fees (e.g. http://www.the-aps.org/mm/Publications/Info-For-Authors/Cost-of-Publica…)
RE: ..."The editorial office replied quickly, and I thank them for that. Alas, they did not answer my question. Instead they simply repeated the same information I found at the website without clarifying anything."
Then you have your answer. They're embarassed by your query, know your point is good and simply have no good answer to it and prefer to duck and avoid rather than speak up forthrightly for their policy which, apparently,when asked directly, they can't defend. Another in an infinite series of similar cases in the world where bullshit so often rules without the slightest concern for being explained.
"The annual revenues generated from English-language STM journal publishing are estimated at about $10 billion in 2013..."
(http://www.stm-assoc.org/2015_02_20_STM_Report_2015.pdf, page 6)
(STM is Scientific, Technical and Medical)
Worse than that are the number of fake journals just waiting for your check.
(http://www.fastcompany.com/3041493/body-week/why-a-fake-article-cuckoo-…)
There has been a series of articles on peer review, fake publishers, etc. at http://retractionwatch.com. From what I have read there your experience is not unusual.
Since you can self publish books at Amazon.com, why not put together a spiffy article, and let people pay you a pittance to download it and read it. Fair turnaround on the STM publishers.
Yes, it's pretty typical in biological disciplines. Molecular Biology and Evolution charges $50 per page and $300 per color figure, which typically puts you over $1000 if using color. Of course no one would pay this out of pocket, any more than you would pay oput of pocket to travel to a conference to present your work - this is (part of) what grant money is for and one typically puts money aside for it in funding proposals.
Actually, a lot of people do have to pay out of pocket to go to conferences, especially when they are first starting out in the profession. And big grants are getting harder and harder to come by.
Since the journal you mention charges by the page, I am assuming that they are still putting out a print edition. Why are they doing that?
I don't see a "tip jar" (donations) link here. How can we get contributions for the article fee to you?
This is pretty typical -- publishing charges for Open Access range from $1000-2000. New publishers like PeerJ are bringing this down. Many government funding agencies now include OA publishing fees in the grant, and explicitly require researchers to publish Open Access.
As an alternative publishing method, have you tried Authorea? (https://www.authorea.com)
You can write your entire paper on Authorea -- LaTeX is supported -- collaborate with co-authors, and make it publicly available, all for free. You can also export for arXiv or specific journals, if you want.
Full disclosure: I work at Authorea. And I think it's awesome.
A "hidden" lesson here on the importance of language and the harms of its degredation--
A number of comments seem to rest on the "point" that, well, "this is just the way things are today" with the implication that we either ought to or, more ominously, that we simply have to accept whatever "is" presumably mainly because it is. Jason's point, however, is not so much about "is" as it is about "ought"--- ought the scientific publishing realm be more and more as it "is" ? When others reply with, "But that's the way things are," they are falling afoul of an important error once known and understood as "begging the question." But the significance of that important phrase has become corupted and, for many, I suspect, simply lost because now many so many people use it ignorantly when what they really mean isthat some set of circumstances pose or raise the question" --that's also a useful concept but it is _not_ what "begging the question" is-- or, more to my point, _ought_ to mean.
"Petitio principii" -- assuming as validly given the very point which is in dispute-- is the formal term for this error in argumentation. At a discussion site devoted to science, where people are generally supposed to take such matters as careful use of concepts and their expression more seriously, use them more carefully than is otherwise commonly the case in the world of so-called non-scientific affairs,we really ought to care enough to keep the distinction clear between what raises a question and what begs a question. The disctinction goes right to how well we reason about the issues concerning us. It strikes me as too important a matter to have allowed this object lesson to go by without comment because we see this in so many ways and on so many occasions in daily discourse.
Ooops! for "degredation" please read, instead, _degradation_.