What is Required to Turn Research Into a Journal Article

  1. Journal Articles Are Selected Through a System That Requires Substantial Support and Investment. Publishers locate experts to act as editors of their journals, typically paying the out-of-pocket editorial administration costs of those experts, and often providing direct compensation as well. Editorial boards are formed, and the expenses associated with their activities are paid or reimbursed by publishers. Publishers provide editors and editorial boards with staff support. Most journals also use online manuscript submission and tracking systems, which are established, managed and maintained by the publisher.1
  2. The Number of Articles Submitted for Publication is Increasing. With twhether or not the article is publishedhe growth in research and scholarship, the rate of manuscript submissions to reputable journals has increased. Editors surveyed in a recent study 2 reported that the average acceptance rate for their journals was about 50%.

    About 20% are rejected prior to peer review (either because of poor quality (13%) or being out of scope (8%)) and another 30% are rejected following peer review. Of the 50% accepted, 40% are accepted subject to revision. Acceptance rates were generally lower in humanities and social sciences, and higher in physical sciences/engineering journals, 3 although the most selective and highly regarded journals have (as would be expected) considerably higher rejection rates. A higher submission rate results in more work and more administrative costs for publishers, since there is a cost associated with every article that is peer reviewed, whether or not the article is published.4 The costs to manage the peer review process, particularly for a journal with high rejection rates, can be significantly higher than would be apparent to the reader, who is seeing only a portion of the manuscripts that actually go through the review process.
  3. Publishers Invest at Every Stage of The Process from Submission to Publication of the Final Article. In order to ensure the quality of the published article and to improve its readability and utility for the reader, publishers incur both direct costs to publish each article, and indirect costs.5

    3.1 Direct costs include (for example):

    • Supporting editors in their management of the peer review process, by keeping track of reviewers and articles, sending articles out to appropriate reviewers, following up with reviewers to make sure the reviews are completed, reviewing the responses and communicating those responses to authors.
    • Content editing, which may range from a routine style and language clean-up to extensive line editing for purposes of clarity (particularly when, as is not uncommon, the author is not writing in his or her native language), and which also typically includes extensive reference and citation checking, review and revision of charts and illustrations, and, where necessary, clearing permissions for the use of previously published materials. To improve the quality of the scholarly record, publishers are working together to incorporate plagiarism detection systems into either their manuscript submission or editing processes. An example of this effort is the CrossCheck™ plagiarism detection system being developed by Publishers International Linking Association (“CrossRef”).
    • Preparing the article for final publication (usually in both print and electronic form) including copyediting, processing author approvals, page preparation, indexing, coding, proofreading, incorporating images and final composition.
    • 3.2 Indirect costs include (for example):
      • Developing and acquiring online systems, and maintaining, updating and improving the associated hardware and software on an ongoing basis. These systems include internal systems for managing the publishing process as well as the electronic platforms that host the journals and through which most researchers access scholarly literature.
      • Marketing activities, to ensure that the intended content users are aware of its availability, which includes making sure that the journal articles are included in all relevant abstracting and indexing databases and linked to and from databases and references. Marketing often includes participation at professional, scientific and library conferences, which highlights the journal to both potential customers (i.e., often libraries) and contributors. Not incidentally, fees paid by publishers at such conferences often subsidize the costs of holding the conference and the opportunity for experts to meet and exchange ideas and information.
      • Sales and licensing activities, including costs related to developing, negotiating and adjusting the licenses to unique local and institutional requirements that are particularly important for the distribution of digital versions of the journals.
      • Investing in robust and scalable linking, archiving and tracking software and hardware systems. Digital technology has revolutionized the role of publishers in connection with archiving, and has transferred much of the responsibility and a substantial portion of the costs associated with creating and maintaining archives from libraries to publishers.
      • Participating in industry initiatives such as the development of standards and protocols, of systems permitting the linking of references across published literature and of best practices to help ensure consistent and reliable access to the literature for everyone involved in scholarly communication.
      • Costs to protect and defend the authoritative version against plagiarism and piracy.
  4. Electronic Distribution has not Reduced Overall Costs for Publishers. While electronic distribution has increased access for users, it has not reduced overall costs for publishers, since most of the direct and indirect costs are incurred before the journal has been printed or published online. Electronic distribution itself involves significant costs over and above the cost of printed journals, which continue to be required by many users. Electronic publishing requires more, not less, staff than analog publishing, and in fact the level of expertise required has increased because of the need for highly trained technical experts at all stages of the process. Significant investments are also required to acquire, maintain and engage in on-going development of both hardware and software infrastructure.
  5. Publishers Can Only Continue to Invest If They Have Sustainable Business Models. Whether the publisher generates revenue through the sale of subscriptions, through an author-pays model in which the researcher or the researcher’s affiliated institution or funding agency subsidizes the costs of publication, or by some other means, the direct and indirect costs of publication must be covered or publishing will not be sustainable.

More Publishing Facts:

1 Three quarters of editors (76%) reported that their journal used an online manuscript submission and tracking system. Their use was most common in life sciences (85%) and least common in humanities and social sciences (51%). (Publishing Research Consortium, Peer review in scholarly journals: Perspective of the scholarly community – an international study (“PRC Peer Review Study”) (copy available for download at http://www.publishingresearch.net/projects.htm)

2 PRC Peer Review Study

3 PRC Peer Review Study

4 Morris, “The true costs of scholarly journal publishing” LEARNED PUBLISHING, Vol. 18, No. 2, April 2005 (“Morris, Costs”) (copy available for download through the ALPSP website (http://www.alpsp.org) or at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp)

5 For a detailed discussion of the costs of journal publishing see King, “The cost of journal publishing, a literature review and commentary,” LEARNED PUBLISHING, Vol. 20, No. 2 (April 2007) (copy available for download through the ALPSP website (http://www.alpsp.org) or at http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/alpsp/lp).