I was just wondering why authors do not get paid to submit work to journals. I think its wierd that authors don't even get royalties per download or citation - we are supposed to think the prestige is all. But any other field of work would not put up with this. I just think its strange that the only people who benefit are the big publishers.

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Authors often do get paid for journal articles, but whether payment is forthcoming seems to depend on one's discipline and the publisher involved.

In principle though, I agree with what you say Sneaks, no other field would put up with lack of payment, but publishers can play upon an academic's desperation to publish.

That said, the margins of profit on many academic publication are tiny, so if you factor in administrating a royalty payment scheme, or giving a lump payment to the author, the publication in question may run a loss; although I don't believe this defence can be levelled at many of the big publishing houses.

it is difficult to even break even on many journals and academic books. It doesn't matter whether it's a big publihing house or not - individual titles should support themselves. Just because a bigger publishing house makes money from more popular it doesn't necessarily make financial sense to bail out academic titles at a loss - although this is infact what many publishers have to do and just write off some titels as loss makers every year.

There may some journals which actually sell enough to make some money - but not most of them. Even with books, many writers get a one off fee - because they would probably get nothing if they relied on royalties, sales of academic texts being so small. It makes the unit cost to the publisher very high. Academic publishing is no gravy train - which is why so much is done by university presses whose busnesses are often set up as charitable trusts.

Another thing. There is a real conflict at the moment between raising money through subscriptions which are often very high and widening access to papers - because without access the papers won't be read and the impact factor plumets. Some of you may be aware of the movement toward open access journals such as the PLoS (Public Library of Science) journals which are peer reviewed and totally open access online. But to make that possible, authors must pay to publish with PLoS. The money has to come from somewhere. I think open access is the future - but there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Hi,

In addition to the authors not getting paid for their work - There is also the issue of academic reviewers not getting paid too!

For those that are interested – This might be worth a read: http://www.freeourbooks.org.uk/