RE: Sabo Legislation/PLoS editorial

["Michael J. Held" <held@mail.rockefeller.edu>]

Dear Harvey:

My apologies for the slow response: your message got filtered into a box
that I missed seeing.

The Journal of Cell Biology has the following charges:  We actually
reduced Page and color charges. There is a page charge of $40.00 for each
page up to and including eight pages and $175 for each page over eight
pages. The authors' inability to meet charges will not affect the
publication of acceptable manuscripts. The cost for separation and
printing of color figures is $500 for the first page and $250 for each
additional page. If you are unable to pay these charges, contact your
Production Editor upon receipt of your estimated color charges letter.

For The Journal of Experimental Medicine:

A basic page charge of $55.00 is made for each printed page. An author's
ability to honor page changes will not affect publication.  The cost for
separation and printing of color figures is $700 for the first page and
$350 for each additional page.

For  The Journal of General Physiology:

Charges to Authors. A charge of $45.00 will be made for each printed page
of type or illustrations. Authors' ability to honor these charges will not
affect publication of acceptable articles. The cost of publishing color
figures will be borne by the authors. The cost of publishing a color page
is $500 for the first color page and $250 for each additional page. The
cost of authors' text alterations in proof is $4.00 per change. Figure
reshoots at the author's request will be charged at $20.00 per black &
white subject, and $90.00 per color subject.

Note that the JEM also has a submission charge of $50.

These charges are fairly in line with those of other not-for-profits,
although it has been a while since I did a comparison.  We have recently
lowered the charges for the JCB.

As far as who gets paid what, that varies.  We pay our editors an
honorarium and it varies by the number of editors involved with a journal
and the amount of actual work that is done by the editor.  Two of our
journals have local editorial boards that play a very active role in the
peer review process, reading each manuscript and meeting to discuss them
weekly, in addition to sending the manuscripts to two-three external
reviewers.  The range of payment from the smallest to the largest journal
of three is ~$5,000 to ~$20,000, with editor-in-chief receiving somewhat
more.  The University considers the time spent as part of the faculty's
academic duty and that it is also prestigious.  The University therefore
does not feel that they should be paid more than an honorarium.  
(Obviously this varies from publisher to publisher, and some editors at
commercial journals receive quite substantial stipends for lending their
support and name by acting as an editor or editor-in-chief.  Other
journals hire full time editors who are not active in academia and pay
them full salaries.)

All copy editing is done by our copy editors that are on staff in the
production office.

I hope this tidbit is helpful.  I'd be happy to elaborate further but am
about to leave for a week on business and have been swamped of late.

All the best,

Michael

___

>Thank you, Michael.  That was very helpful.  I'm glad you noted that
>authors sometimes pay page charges.  Do you know how common this is, and
>what a typical charge is?  I've never found it necessary in library
>literature, but in talking to science colleages, it seems fairly common.
>
>I'm also interested in who gets paid what for the editorial process. 
>I've certainly known editors using the library to do a tremendous amount
>of copy editing.  On the other extreme was a refereed conference
>proceedings that I recently wrote that was published by a major publisher
>(Wiley?) that required that we present them with "camera ready"
>(electronic) final copy, and all editing was done by me and the referees
>(presumably not paid for this).
>
>Harvey Brenneise
>Michigan Public Health Institute
>hbrenne@mphi.org