Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 195.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: <riddella@indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.189: paying to be published (238)
[2] From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.189: paying to be published (53)
[3] From: Bill Pascoe <bill.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published? (40)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-09-07 15:52:22+00:00
From: <riddella@indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.189: paying to be published
Remarkably, there's a strong case that many of the "exposes" regarding
"predatory" open-access publishing are themselves predatory: they advance the
interests of the apex predators, the for-profit academic publishers who have
been feasting on public funds and free academic labor for decades.
Björn Brembs (Regensburg) published a detailed blog post on this topic this
Tuesday: "Is this Smits’ tripleC moment?" https://bjoern.brembs.net/2023/09/is-
this-smits-triplec-moment/
Until reading Brembs' post, I had not realized that some of the predatory
publishing "watchdogs" have expressed their opposition to open-access publishing
in general. For example, Jeffrey Beall, the maintainer of one prominent list of
journals, has, in writing, "claimed that OA proponents don’t care about access,
but that they form an 'anti-corporatist movement that wants to deny the freedom
of the press to companies it disagrees with'."
I think the prudent course of action is the one that Umil Karadkar suggests:
look at the editorial board and make up your own mind.
Best wishes,
Allen Riddell
On Thu, 7 Sep 2023, at 04:36, Humanist wrote:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 189.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: Maroussia Bednarkiewicz <maroussia.b@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published? (81)
>
> [2] From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published? (32)
>
> [3] From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at)
> <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published? (55)
>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2023-09-06 10:09:12+00:00
> From: Maroussia Bednarkiewicz <maroussia.b@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published?
>
> Regarding MDPI and their policy, as well as their classification as
> predatory publication, here's an informative article that might be
> interesting to read with regards to this discussion:
> https://predatory-publishing.com/is-mdpi-a-predatory-publisher/
>
> And here the predatory classification of MDPI journals:
> https://predatoryreports.org/news/f/list-of-all-mdpi-predatory-publications
>
> Kind regards,
> Maroussia
>
> Le mer. 6 sept. 2023 à 08:36, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> a écrit :
>
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 183.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2023-08-31 13:31:41+00:00
>> From: John Wall <jnwall@ncsu.edu>
>> Subject: Pay for Publication
>>
>> Willard,
>>
>> I'm curious to learn if paying money for scholarly publication in the
>> (digital) humanities is a phenomenon that others have experienced. Is it
>> customary and I am simply not familiar with it? Is the need to publish
>> becoming so critical that people are willing to pay for it? To pay what
>> looks like lots of money for it?
>>
>> I've received a long and entailed email from someone associated with
>> something called MDPI announcing a
>>
>> *"Special Issue entitled "Big Data Visualization and Virtual Reality", to
>> be published in the journal Information (ISSN 2078-2489, IF 3.1). Based on
>> your expertise in this field, we think you could make an excellent
>> contribution. We welcome researchers, data scientists, designers, and
>> industrial professionals to submit their original research and review
>> articles that address open questions, provide insightful experiments,
>> evaluations, and case studies, present an advance in performance and
>> interaction modality design, or provide insights and guidelines towards
>> future design and challenges. For further reading, please follow the link
>> to the Special Issue Website
>> at: https://www.mdpi.com/si/information/P1200T1SVV
>> <https://www.mdpi.com/si/information/P1200T1SVV>" *
>>
>> All well and good -- except when I got further into the email
>> I discovered that if they accepted the essay I must pay them over $1800.00.
>> Or as they put it, *"An Article Processing Charge (APC) of 1600 CHF
>> currently applies to all papers accepted after peer review." *
>>
>> This feels like someone here is going to make a tidy profit out of this
>> issue. I've published a good number of essays in my time, but I've never
>> been asked to buy my way into print before. I'm not at all interested in
>> starting now, and I have advised these folks of my concern. It feels like a
>> form of bribery to me.
>>
>> Others' thoughts?
>>
>> JNW
>>
>> --
>> The Rev Dr John N. Wall, FRHistS
>> Professor Emeritus of English Literature
>> North Carolina State University
>> Principal Investigator for
>> The Virtual John Donne Project
>> https://virtualdonne.chass.ncsu.edu/
>> Including
>> The Virtual St Paul's Cathedral Project
>> https://vpcathedral.chass.ncsu.edu/
>> The Virtual Paul's Cross Project
>> https://vpcross.chass.ncsu.edu/
>> The Virtual Trinity Chapel Project
>> https://vtcp.chass.ncsu.edu/
>
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2023-09-06 18:54:11+00:00
> From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published?
>
> hi John,
> i too receive frequently similar announcements/offers.
> similar i mean
> 1) the flattering ouverture: "Based on your expertise in this field, we
> think you could make an excellent
> contribution"
> 2) the 360° intended audience: "researchers, data scientists, designers,
> and industrial professionals"
> 3) the 360° object: "original research and review articles that address
> open questions, provide insightful experiments, evaluations, and case
> studies, present an advance in performance and interaction modality
> design, or provide insights and guidelines towards future design and
> challenges"
> 4) no scientific scope, no detail of main relevant topics.
>
> when i see them i simply discard them.
> best
> Maurizio
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> quanti nella loro vita / si fecero custodi delle Termopili, /
> sono degni di più grande onore / se prevedono (e molti lo prevedono) /
> che all’ultimo comparirà un Efialte / e comunque i Persiani passeranno
> kostantinos kavafis, termopili
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Maurizio Lana
> Università del Piemonte Orientale
> Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
> Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
>
> --[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2023-09-06 08:16:13+00:00
> From: Karadkar, Unmil (unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at)
> <unmil.karadkar@uni-graz.at>
> Subject: RE: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published?
>
> Dear John,
>
> To share my perspective (not comprehensive or universal) 😊
>
> Historically, publishers have required subscriptions or purchases for
published
> materials (Springer, Wiley, IEEE, ACM, etc.) resulting in a situation where
> readers/consumers/subscribers pay for the privilege of reading scholarly
> materials. Over the last 20 years or so, as Web publishing went mainstream and
> "open access" became a key phrase, several universities and even individual
> professors tried their hand at forming editorial boards and publishing
journals
> online with a goal of providing free access to readers--they quickly ran into
> problems of maintenance. While it's easy to publish an article or a journal
> issue, someone must do the hard work of updating the hardware, web server
> software, applications that run on the web server, manage the publishing
> process, etc.
>
> Several open access journals failed but such failures highlighted a market for
> MDPI and Frontiers (a predatory publisher--do a Google search, if interested).
> Publication and access has costs, which someone must pay. These publishers
> charge the authors a one-time fee to publish their articles in order pay for
the
> costs of keeping the article free for access to the readers in perpetuity
(taken
> with a grain of salt).
>
> Increasingly, research funding agencies are allowing the inclusion of such
costs
> in grant proposals in order to ensure that products of taxpayer funded
research
> should be freely available to the taxpayers
> (https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/08/25/ostp-issues-guidance-
> to-make-federally-funded-research-freely-available-without-delay/)
>
> While payment for publication is arguable, pay-to-publish is a pejorative term
> that implies that payment guarantees publication. Springer, for example, does
> offer an open access possibility (https://www.springeropen.com/get-
> published/article-processing-charges) but all articles still go through their
> standard peer review process and must pass the reviewing/editing bars. I don't
> consider this pay-to-publish. In contrast, Frontiers, a Swiss publisher has
been
> known to strong-arm editors, reviewers, and those maintaining lists of
predatory
> journals (https://forbetterscience.com/2015/10/28/is-frontiers-a-potential-
> predatory-publisher/). I have vowed never to publish with any Frontiers
journal.
>
> I don't know enough about MDPI's history to comment on the specifics but
> publishing-for-profit is a thing and article processing charges are a thing
> (Gold open access, vs. the green open access, which the university publishers
> attempt-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access).
>
> Given the difference between a pay-to-publish journal (no quality, payment
> guarantees publication) and a pay-for-open-access (quality, pay for broader
> dissemination, free access to readers), you may have to do your own research.
I
> would check whether the editorial board of the journal that you will publish
in
> includes people of repute, whether their editorial process seems reliable and
> reeks of quality (yes!), perhaps, even contact the editors...
>
> With warm regards,
> -unmil.
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-09-07 13:30:21+00:00
From: Norman Gray <norman.gray@glasgow.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.189: paying to be published
Greetings.
On 7 Sep 2023, at 5:36, Humanist wrote:
> Given the difference between a pay-to-publish journal (no quality, payment
> guarantees publication) and a pay-for-open-access (quality, pay for broader
> dissemination, free access to readers), you may have to do your own research.
Unmil's terminological distinction is a good one, which can be expanded by
noting that the former are (broadly speaking) the ones actively scouting for
business ('as a leading researcher... special issue...' and all that), and the
latter are the traditional, and respectable, journals who are switching the
source of their funding model from subscribers to authors. The latter will
typically have a more or less respectable rejection rate, and will require the
APC only after an article has been accepted for publication, post-review.
The model has long been common in the physical sciences at least. It's now
framed in terms of open access (a Good Thing, of course) rather than cost-
splitting, and has been renamed 'article processing charge' rather than 'page
charges' -- it's now a flat fee for the article rather than scaled to the number
of pages, and of colour figures. As Unmil says, it's common for research grants
to include an APC element for publishing the research resulting from the grant,
simply as the 'cost of doing business'.
As a funding model, this is a different mess from the previous pure-subscription
mess. I'd hesitate to say whether it was more or less of a mess, but it's
certainly one reliable way of starting a screaming argument at a conference.
It's a mess that's not magically solved by having a DIY journal, or an arXiv-
overlay journal, though both of those seem obviously better ideas when floated
in a conference bar. I've taken a turn on this merry-go-round myself, and have
some slightly rueful remarks at [1].
My favourite solution to the problem is SCOAP3 [2], where a coalition of funders
pay a consortium of journal publishers directly, with the result that there are
neither APCs nor subscription charges. This skips the middlemen, and so avoids
the mess of APCs or subscriptions and the corresponding huge transaction costs,
costs which make everyone involved feel they're being scammed in some hard-to-
pin-down way. That works in that (particle physics) community because the
relevant funders are used to shelling out eye-watering sums, and because the set
of relevant journals is small and well-defined; it would be much harder in a
less homogeneous community.
Best wishes,
Norman
[1] https://text.nxg.me.uk/2019/2
[2] https://scoap3.org/what-is-scoap3/
--
Norman Gray : https://nxg.me.uk
SUPA School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, UK
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2023-09-07 07:53:40+00:00
From: Bill Pascoe <bill.pascoe@unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 37.183: paying to be published?
Dear John Wall,
I'm not sure how common it is, but from what I hear it is increasingly expected.
It seems a big problem that the choice is limited to:
i) subscription journals block most people from accessing information that was
usually paid for by the public and should be public, is for the public good and
the lack of access creates unfair disadvantages for the large majority of people
who can't afford to subscribe to access the many things they might be curious
about. Unless there's some overriding reason for privacy, academic work
inherently invites reproducibility, public access and critique, and unnecessary
fees unnecessarily limit access.
ii) the writer paying a publisher for publishing, which creates a wide opening
for corrupt editorial decisions, and excludes the vast majority of people who
don't have a thousand dollars to spare on what might easily be dismissed as a
vanity publication
I seem to recall that a paper at the DH conference in Mexico was about how free
open journal publishing was already a widely adopted practice in South and
Central America. In terms of IT support it's relatively cheap to run free online
publishing systems, and it's simply an expected part of an academic's workload
to peer review journals from time to time, which seems reasonable. Journals are
free to publish in and free to read.
In the Anglophone world academic careers depend on publication statistics in
ranked journals published by a small amount of highly profitable companies.
If true open scholarly publishing is already proven to be possible on a large
scale, in terms of IT supportability and Academic practice, why is it not
already the standard approach in the Anglophone world too?
I stress this is all speculation on half remembered points - unfortunately I
don't have time to double check the ins and outs. I just point it out as an area
well worth looking into if you can find time, and would be interested to hear if
any one can clarify these points with some of their own knowledge and research.
Bill Pascoe
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