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Re: Post Brussels : Elsevier and Australian STM debate 'sprouts'



I cannot claim to know how commercial or society publishers compensate editors of their journals, but I can tell you that Penn State Press pays not a cent to any of the editors of its 11 journals-and I suspect we are not alone among university press journal publishers.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


I just want to comment on one aspect of this posting and ignore Colin's ill-informed financial suppositions about the incomes of the big players. I am sure that he can get a grant to trawl through the returns from the public companies concerned.

He and is friends ("a number of us in Australia") are almost
certainly misinformed. If I was a journal editor would I tell Colin
how much I earned? I would not.

I have never worked for Elsevier but I would be amazed if that
company do not pay their editors and the editorial infrastructure
well and at a rate rising considerably above inflation. My own
experience of a publisher is along these lines. I have worked for
Academic, OUP, and Chapman & Hall and I now work part-time for
Blackwell - though I am not posting for them or from them. I know
that all the editors whom I currently deal with get paid. My memory
is that this is true of all the hundreds of journals I have
published in the past.

I am certain that Elsevier is not different from these publishers
and I would very surprised if Australia was different in this
particular way.

I know that there are some self-published society journals where the
editor is not paid by the society. I came across one example the
other day. However this editor was supported by an impressive paid
infrastructure and he agreed that his successor would have to be
paid.

My own experience of publishing, which is rather greater than that
of Colin (now I know a publisher), is that, whereas in the past
editors could use the resources of their departments, this is
usually no longer the case in most parts of the world and this adds
considerably to editorial costs. There are other inflationary
factors at work too. Because of the increased pressures of academic
life to do research and publish the results, publishers are now
frequently expected to "buy-out" consultancy time - at least in
those disciplines where consultancy is a fact of life and a reward
that supplements poor academic salaries.

Anthony Watkinson