---
layout: post
status: publish
published: true
title: ! 'Mythbusting: "A Proposed List — 60 Things Journal Publishers Do"'

wordpress_id: 2250
wordpress_url: https://www.martineve.com/?p=2250
date: !binary |-
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date_gmt: !binary |-
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categories:
- Open Access
- Academia
tags:
- academia
- OA
- OpenAccess
comments: []
---
<p>Kent Anderson recently wrote a post over at Scholarly Kitchen entitled "<a href="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/07/18/a-proposed-list-60-things-journal-publishers-do/">A Proposed List — 60 Things Journal Publishers Do</a>". I think this list needs a little mythbusting: I agree with some of the points, think others need qualifying and that others are just hands-down false. So here's my rundown:</p>
<p>I also want to add a qualifier: "things publishers do" isn't really good enough. It should be: "things that only publishers can do" or "things publishers do, that researchers don't or can't". I have marked as "false" those aspects that apply to any business, rather than actually contributing to what publishers do. If somebody came up to you, trying to sell you their service, and they said: "what we can do for you is to manage our sales force and have our own prestigious offices", there would be nothing for you to buy, so I'm really not counting those.</p>
<p>In fact, most of these points, in my take, are "True, but...": they've been presented here in such a way that, yes, publishers do them, but they are perhaps either not needed or are spun in such a way as to inflate their importance.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.martineve.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Dragon_GuilaneNachez-1024x685.jpg" alt="Dragon" title="Dragon" style="width:750px;" class="alignnone size-large wp-image-2254" /></p>
<table>
<tr>
<th>Number</th>
<th>True/False</th>
<th>Researchers do already?</th>
<th>Researchers could do?</th>
<th>Qualifying remarks</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>1</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Detecting our needs. I think we already know this (or what would they be detecting?). This could uncharitably be re-worked as: "figuring out what will make us money" and nobody ever paid for that before</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>2</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Not hard. ISSN assignment is free.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>3</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>I think we should be moving away from article brand and instead focusing on article-level branding.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>4</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>I'm sceptical on this. I think journal reputation is actually a proxy measure (one short of financial abstraction) for academic capital, not the effort of the publisher.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>5</td>
<td>True (with qualification)</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>I think the costs are highly inflated in most publisher estimations. The actual costs of running an online Open Access journal, minus staff time, are small. If you want to factor in staff, then sure, but these could be relocated in-house and thus avoid the profit motive in publishing.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>6</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes, infrastructures require setup and maintenance, but it's hardly rocket science, as I showed in my recent OA guide.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>7</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>We can all write a CFP...</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>8</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Academics actually already know how to reject submissions...</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>9</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Likewise, we can accept papers...</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>10</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>No qualms, except that we can do this also.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>11</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>OK: definitely some scope for work on this. Think publishers have the edge here.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>12</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>I think this is pure PR-speak. This is true in one sense: most journals <i>do<i> this. However, most authors I suspect would prefer, certainly in my case, that they didn't! The copyright transfer terms for most publishers are barbaric and clearly only designed to restrict dissemination and further their business model. Marking as false for this reason</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>13</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Knowing the right people to edit and review a journal; scholars do this in our own disciplines</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>14</td>
<td>True (to some degree)</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>I've never seen a public acknowledgement of my help as a reviewer. I've further only had communication when they wanted a review.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>15</td>
<td>True/False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Very little "training" takes place and it's mostly "read the help docs". OJS provides such help documentation already, for free. That's the false part. Where I agree is that asking the right questions leads to good responses and publishers do this.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>16</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>This is too far from my discipline to really comment, so I'll concede this one.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>17</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As per 16</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>18</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>OK, so publishers do train editors, but it's only from experience. An editor could then train another editor. You can see where I'm going with this</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>19</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Anybody who's run a scholar-publisher enterprise knows that we need meetings...</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>20</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Again, OJS provides a very good structure to cope with variations in peer review process.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>21</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Publishers do this, but free journal software also provides most of what's needed to keep up to date in this area</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>22</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>This falls under many of the same "author declaration" type material. You need to write the agreement once and make sure that authors sign it</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>23</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>A good editor is hard to find. Again, it seems to me that much of this is only opaque because it is outside the academy and once the knowledge is in-house, this changes</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>24</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>I have no experience of this, but I note that it's only "some high-end journals" that provide this facility. No illustrators for you plebs!</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>25</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>No qualms with this one, but I do query how frequently this occurs beyond normal proofreading</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>26</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As per 25</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>27</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>There is a lot to layout editing that is technical. It is feasible to work it out, but, as I've detailed, it's not a trivial process. Definitely publisher value here</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>28</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As per 27</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>29</td>
<td>True/False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>I'm sure some do deploy this. Others, though, completely rely on author tagging</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>30</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As the original notes, this is absolutely trivial.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>31</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Seriously. Don't try and game Google. It's such a waste of time. Just make good content and it will be ranked according to its worth</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>32</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Maybe true in some areas, but I haven't seen this in a long while. Rapid publication = a year and a half wait in the humanities</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>33</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Publishers publish? Really? Never knew that... (!)</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>34</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As journals move online, I think print will become obsolete for this format</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>35</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 34</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>36</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>It seems to me that most publisher-media relations are about publishers covering their own backs and pushing their brand, rarely about pushing for an author's own brand</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>37</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>We can all work a Facebook and Twitter account. Some publishers do this very badly, also!</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>38</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Hosting platforms are only expensive because publishers are using proprietary systems, rather than improving open source efforts for their own, and other people's, purposes. OJS costs $0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>39</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>OK, yes, you do this. Patching isn't that fun</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>40</td>
<td>True sometimes</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Most journals I read don't have comments. I also debate the value of comments, the web is a distributed system, so go write somewhere else</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>41</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>42</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>A good publisher watches for these things. I wonder how many fall in that "good" category...</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>43</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Well, it's true, but this is no different to running any other company, so can hardly count in this debate!</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>44</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Yes, information security is important. Does also apply to any company keeping any records, though</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>45</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As per 44</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>46</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Perhaps</td>
<td>OK, I wouldn't like to respond to legal action and I'm glad someone can do this.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>47</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Marked as false because, as with other entries on this list, this applies to *any* company, not just publishers</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>48</td>
<td>True, but rationale false</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Actually, what about a non-profit, OA business model? "Whatever your business model" is too broad. A non-commercial system doesn't need to do this</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>49</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 48 and others for generic business practice</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>50</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>If non-commercial, may not apply</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>51</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>52</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>53</td>
<td>False</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>As per all generic business practice, having somewhere to exist is not enough in this game. Trying to justify prices on the fact that you're expected to have prestigious offices? Bah.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>54</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Scholars also have to keep on top of developments, though</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>55</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>Again, this seems more of an effort that is required to make sure publishers tap markets for profit, rather than being crucial to scholarly communication</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>56</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>57</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>58</td>
<td>True, but...</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>See 50</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>59</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>60</td>
<td>True</td>
<td>No</td>
<td>Yes</td>
<td>There is a lot to layout editing that is technical. It is feasible to work it out, but, as I've detailed, it's not a trivial process. Definitely publisher value here</td>
</tr>
</table>