Friday, July 02, 2004

JCSS To Pay Editors, Possibly Referees

The Elsevier owned Journal of Computer and System Sciences will pay an honorarium of $100 to a cognizant editor for each paper handled. According to Editor-in-Chief Ed Blum the intent "is to establish the practice of compensating editors for their scholarly contribution to scientific publication and is a partial response to the complaint that we scholars do all the work and the publishers reap all the rewards. This practice will apply to Guest Editors of Special Issues. I am aware that it does not address the problem of journal pricing. I am still working on that. I am pretty sure that we can also give a $50, honorarium to referees, but am awaiting a final OK [from Elsevier] on that." (Thanks to Bill Gasarch for this information.)

Update 8/7/04: JCSS is rescinding this new policy of awarding honoraria for papers handled.

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3 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:40 AM, July 04, 2004

    I might be cynical but I feel that Elsevier is
    trying to preserve thier hold by "paying off" the
    editors. The main point is to have easy access to
    scholarly work for the community and I don't see
    how this move helps. They could lower their rates
    instead.

    Chandra

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  2. Anonymous8:24 AM, July 05, 2004

    They already seem to have the wrong reward structure. If at all, they should pay more to referees than to editors. It's after all the referee who pours enormous amounts of work into checking every little detail in a paper and *remains anonymous*. Editors get partially rewarded by the recogintion; I do appreciate that they do a lot of work too. Still, this shows where the priorities of the publsihers are.

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  3. Anonymous10:07 AM, July 05, 2004

    It is definitely a "business protection" mesure. Giving more money to the editors is also a way to keep the good names in the system as they can earn enough money not to be interested in going the "work for free so publish for free" way. This is also a direct recognition that they were making a lot of money on our work.

    In the process engineering field, no money yet.

    Regards,
    lo�

    ReplyDelete