A couple of days ago Peter Civáň wrote an excellent account of why he’s given up refereeing for academic journals. I quite understand. The system is broken and referees are slave labour. Their only recompense is being able to write “Referee for Journal of Futile Endeavour“, on their C.V., hoping this improves employability. It doesn’t, I promise. I’ve sat on numerous appointment panels and only recall one interviewer taking the slightest interest in a candidate’s refereeing efforts. “This chap reviews for a lot of journals; but doesn’t publish much himself,” he observed. The candidate didn’t get the job.
I’m sure that’s not Peter’s problem, but – forgive me, and I hope this isn’t taken badly – I do rather sense a shocked innocent recoiling from the brothel curtains. So, let an old roué and sometime Editor for three mid-ranking journals (Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, Journal of Medical Microbiology and International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents) take you on a tour. As for my further credentials, I’ve published over 500 papers and appear on Clarivate’s ‘Most cited‘.
The model I entered, late in the 1980s, was the one that Robert Maxwell built. Maxwell’s genius, with Government help, was to establish new journals or to agree, for a cut, to manage those owned by professional societies. His vehicle, Pergamon Press, recruited senior academics as editors and lesser ones as sub-editors. The subs batted the papers to and from referees and the senior put the journal together. Pergamon promoted itself as ‘the place to publish’, taking trade stands at conferences and ear-bending librarians. They didn’t need to work too hard. The Senior Editor pressed his staff and friends to publish in his new journal. Authors insisted that their university library subscribe. Even if it was still ‘society-owned’ the journal charged libraries far more than an individual subscription. Members could be blackballed for sharing their private copy.
Ker-ching!!!
Academics, who did most of the work, were recompensed by status and hospitality. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy dined me at the Savoy when I finished my three-year stint; Journal of Medical Microbiology had glorious two-day meetings at a hotel near Tintern Abbey. I shudder to recall how many hours I spent to earn these treats.
Maxwell prospered until he over-reached himself elsewhere and walked off the back of the Lady Ghislaine. Subscriptions, subscription rates and journal numbers rose. Pharma companies learnt that a journal’s name added respectability to promotional copy and sponsored supplements on their new drugs, paying handsomely for mountains of reprints. Elsevier entered the fray, bought out Pergamon and became far the largest scientific publisher.
Even so, there were costs. Journals had to be typeset, printed and distributed. At Journal of Medical Microbiology we bickered with Churchill Livingstone about how to balance the number of papers accepted with the costs of page allocation. If we increased the page count it cost the society and increased the postage bill. Alternatively, we could reject more papers, or adopt a narrower typeface. As we did.
The new century changed everything, with online publishing, impact factors and open access.
Online option became online only, turning silver mines into gold mines. No more paper, printing or distribution costs. No more balancing papers with page allocation. It also became far easier to start a new journal, as publishers recognised. No need to pulp unsold issues and bear the loss if no one subscribed.
Just find some rising academic and flatter him, saying what an important person he was becoming and how it’d look good on his C.V. to be Editor of the Journal of Rapid Diagnostics. “You recruit a few sub-editors, work with them to pull in papers and have them refereed; we’ll do everything from there,” they’d promise. Which meant a website and a bit of semi-automated formatting, subcontracted to India. A subscription to his new journal was included in a huge bundle of online subs, which the publisher sold to university libraries.
Only if the journal began to succeed did the publisher take any real interest. After all, they’d taken the same punt on scores of other academics. It’s the venture capital model. Spread your bets all over the table. Anticipate a few big winners amid many losers. Then run winners and cut losers. With the wonderful refinement that, in academic publishing, unlike venture capital, the losers cost the publisher next to nothing. The sucker is the rising academic who wasn’t half as clever as he thought he was. He’s wasted evenings and nights on a doomed venture that would have paid him nothing had it succeeded.
Impact factors are a bureaucrat’s dream. The higher the impact factor, the greater the journal’s status. Accordingly, impact factors are carefully husbanded. Publishing likely-to-be-cited reviews is smart, as are papers from high-profile authors. Themed issues help because authors cross cite one another, inflating impact factors. Things to avoid are case reports and papers on unfashionable topics, which no one cites, however important they are. Controversial papers ought to drive impact, but editors avoid them, fearing that, as with Wakefield, they’ll pull the journal into the mud. Many of us saw that during Covid, but it is not new. A friend struggled for ages to publish a novel hypothesis on the time-course of evolution. I don’t say he’s right or wrong. I don’t know. But I do know that evolution has run swifter than conventional models explain. So novel ideas deserve interest.
And so to Open Access. Around the turn of the century Maxwell’s model met a rebellion of sorts, with libraries finding that they could no longer afford every journal they were pressed to take. What’s more, funders began to say that “The public paid for this research; they ought to be able to see the results for free.” So, a new model – Open Access – developed. Here the academic, university or grant pays to publish the paper, which then becomes openly available. The going rate is £2,000-£4,000 per paper, depending on the journal.
Set up with these good intentions, Open Access has infected not just the bordello but also the surrounding countryside. First, it means that anyone without publication funds struggles to be published, however interesting their observations. If you’re a jobbing physician with a peculiar case series, an independent scientist, or a grant-less writer of theories, then hard lines, unless you have deep pockets.
Second, it has enabled a proliferation of predatory ‘journals’ run by people, often in India and China, who make Major Maxwell look like Mother Theresa. They gull the unwary and desperate into publishing with them at considerable cost and to no benefit. Despite blocking dozens of these shysters, my spam folder remains awash with their invites. Some are genuinely nasty people who threatened an honest librarian, Jeffrey Beall, who published a list of the biggest offenders. All claim to have peer review, but will publish anything if payment, or a promise of payment, is proffered – as demonstrated by folks who’ve deliberately submitted garbled rubbish as an experiment.
Ker-ching!!!
Third, Open Access has opened new income streams to the more ‘reputable’ publishers and their academic society partners. If my paper is accepted by their old, free-to-publish journal, I’m encouraged, as I sign the copyright transfer form, to make it Open Access by paying the appropriate fee. UEA has a bulk-payment agreement with Elsevier, I’m helpfully informed. All I need do is click one little box. I don’t seem to need anyone’s approval.
Ker-ching!!!
If, on the other hand, my paper is rejected by the old free-to-publish journal, I’m immediately encouraged to transfer it to an Open Access stablemate, or the publishers ‘All Topics’ science journal, with rejection hinted to be less likely.
Ker-ching!!!
A mid-range Open-Access journal, publishing 15 papers per month at £3,000 apiece turns half a million pounds a year, with very low costs. Last year I was invited to become a Senior Editor for one such organ. To my surprise, they said they’d pay me $6,000 per annum. On top of which I’d be encouraged to develop themed issues, suggesting topics and finding authors. From these I’d receive a further cut, bringing my income to $12,000 p.a., with most of the work done by junior editors and AI tools. I confess I was tempted, but ultimately turned it down. I didn’t like the way the folks at the bottom got nothing – not even two days at Tintern. And, with profit depending on papers published, there was too much pressure to accept, particularly for those themed issues. Nor do I trust AI to be objective, particularly when it meets a theory that runs against conventional wisdom.
But $6,000 or $12,000 or £500,000 is a drop in the bucket. Anyone wanting to see the real money should look at Elsevier. Back in the 80s it wasn’t in the FTSE 100, though Reed International, with which it later merged, was there. Now it’s London’s eighth biggest company by market capitalisation, and that’s not down to Reed.
Turnover is £8bn per year and profit £1.6bn, while the bright folks who do the legwork do not even get the minimum wage.
Dr. David Livermore is a retired Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of East Anglia.
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