[Open-access] more open access particle physics

Tue Sep 25 12:10:34 UTC 2012

On 25 September 2012 13:06, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:
> If they are publishing the same product (copyedited, peer-review
> arrangement, PDF , HTML and dead-tree versions) why have they negotiated
> different prices with different publishers?
>
> Why does Jagiellonian University only charge $650 for Acta Physica Polonica
> B
> whilst Elsevier's Nuclear Physics B gets to charge $2000
>
> Does Nuclear Physics B really provide >3 times more added value than a
> publication in Acta Physica Polonica B?

Impact factors.

> N.B. Don't even think about referring to journal impact factors if you want
> to answer that question!

Sorry, but we both know it's the truth. It's a stupid truth, but a
true one nevertheless.

> If the SCOAP3 community is so well organised and publishes in so few
> journals, why does it need more expensive journals? Why can't they just
> expand the editorial board and publish everything in Acta Physica Polonica B
> and spend the leftover money on something better than giving more profit to
> commercial publishers like Elsevier and Springer?

A practical reason is that the high-energy particle physics community
is not hermetically sealed off from the rest of the world. Often a HEP
physicist will be in competition with a physicist from a different
field for the same job or grant. So rightly or wrongly HEP physicists
continue to feel the pressure to publish in the fashionable journals.

> Journals are just vessels for containing research. It doesn't matter if
> research is published across 1000 or just 2 or 3 'journals'. As long as we
> have appropriate filtering tools (which I think we do have), then we should
> be able to find the research we need.

Yes; but you are thinking about science. Most people also think about
their careers.

(Much, much more on this dichortomy coming soon on SV-POW!, by the way.)

-- Mike.