Comments on: Hindawi’s ISRN Brand Offers to Pay for Articles

By: Money Talks — How Audience Priorities and Publishing Incentives Can Lead to Unusual OA Behaviors « The Scholarly Kitchen

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 09:31:04 +0000

[...] first is the news from Hindawi that, as part of launching ISRN Oceanography, they will begin paying authors t…. The articles are being positioned as solo-author reviews called “Spotlight Articles,” [...]

By: ATG Hot Topic of the Week: Open Access – Who Pays and Who Benefits? | Against-the-Grain.com

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 20:05:54 +0000

[...] to publish review articles to earn $1000 by boosting the journal brands. Jeffrey Beall has the story at Scholarly Open Access, which is an interesting blog that also highlights what he alleges to be [...]

By: Margaret Sampson

Margaret Sampson — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:05:21 +0000

I would like to see a clear statement that the author had been commissioned and paid by the journal – that could go in the acknowledgements // conflict of interest // funding section often found at the end of articles. I don’t see the practice as terribly worrisome, as long as there is transparency.

By: Is PeerJ Membership Publishing Sustainable? « The Scholarly Kitchen

Is PeerJ Membership Publishing Sustainable? « The Scholarly Kitchen — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 09:30:41 +0000

[...] Second, and more importantly, a community of informed reciprocity requires that a large community be built quickly in order to take advantage of the social network effects. Initially, when the community is small, it may be very difficult to enlist a competent member-reviewer for a submitted manuscript. PeerJ will need to go out to the rest of the author community for review help, and this may be difficult to do if the quality of the submitted manuscripts are poor. The competition amongst open access journals is getting intense, with one publisher announcing that it will pay prominent authors to write review papers for them (with lo…. [...]

By: Sanford Gray Thatcher

Sanford Gray Thatcher — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 05:07:16 +0000

I have mixed feelings about this. Quite reputable book publishers, including university presses, might start a new book series by commissioning a leading scholar to write an initial book for the series. I don’t think anyone would find this an especially reprehensible or ethically dubious tactic. So, why are we queasy when the same approach is used to launch a new journal? Is it just because journal publishers typically do not pay authors anything, whereas book publishers do? Is it ethically important to uphold that tradition and the difference between journal and book publishing? If so, why?

By: moom

moom — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 23:46:20 +0000

Journals have always invited contributions for first issues etc. The only difference here is they are paying.