Recently I was kindly offered to become an editor for a new open access journal called ALGORITHMS published by MDPI. At first sight it looked as a great idea, and the editorial board contains some very impressive researchers. However, when I started to read the instructions for call for papers more closely I realised that the authors of an accepted paper have to pay roughly 1000 CHF (roughly the same in Australian/US dollars).
So instead of letting the readers pay for the journal the authors have to pay for their articles to get published. In the theory community we don't have the tradition of paying for our publications. On one hand this approach is much cheaper for the community but can you guarantee quality in this system? It's not obvious that one system is better than the other but personally I rather pay to read a paper than to publish it. However, I'm very curious to hear what other researchers think about this.
Friday, August 1, 2008
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It's a scam. Open access journals cost nothing but time. (Authors and referees and editors still have lots of work to do, of course, but most journals don't pay for that work.) Disk space and bandwidth are essentially free.
ReplyDeleteSo where does the 1000CHF go?
It might look like a scam, but there's the countervailing argument that publicly funded research should be accessible by the public for free, instead of being locked up behind the publishers' iron gates. If they justified where the money was going, maybe that would alleviate some of the concerns.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's a scam in the same sense in which IEEE, Elsevier, Springer etc are scams. With one exception: we can still stop this scam before it reaches epic proportions. I have rejected my own invitation.
ReplyDeleteI am not in the field of TCS and thus cannot evaluate the legitimacy of this journal.
ReplyDeleteHowever, in other disciplines, this format is widely accepted and respected. Prominent examples are BioMed Central and its sister companies. Of course, these are focused in fields that receive considerably more funding than TCS, so the fees are less of a burden.
More worrisome to me than the page charges are the facts that the editors are people I have never heard of, the publisher is an institute I have never heard of, and the invitation letter states that the editorial board plays no actual role in editorial decisions (outside of possible special issues). This (and the fact that their website prominently lists "rapid publication" as a feature) does not give me great confidence in the quality of the journal.
ReplyDeleteAdd me to the list of people who were invited. Like David, I was puzzled by the fact that the letter of invitation assures me that as an editor I won’t actually have any editorial duties.
ReplyDeleteI also got an invite, but I don't believe it said that editor did not have to do any work. I think it was just confused English. The last sentence says you would have some editorial duties, but the organization makes it sound as if this is only related to a special issue, which is not what I think they actually mean. At least that was my impression.
ReplyDelete"The membership of the editorial board will be an honorary title. However, you may help to edit a special issue on a topic related to your research if you have time. The editorial office in Basel, Switzerland will take care of the whole editorial process. You will be responsible for making the final decision on whether a paper is acceptable or not, after peer review and author's revision. ..."
Anyway, I think it is a scam, too. But besides the scams such as Elsevier and Springer that mip mentions, there are other big scams in CS. For example, INFORMS charges something like $550 registration fee, has thousands of attendees and makes a lot of profits from the conference. But then some good people organize some good sessions and it's beneficial. If everyone took this algorithms journal and joined the board and refused to accept junk, it could be a good journal. If they didn't make people pay for submissions ...
also discussed at http://infoweekly.blogspot.com/2008/08/open-access.html
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