Thoughts on the Scientific Publishing Model, And Its Inverse

I mentioned the idea of an Elsevier boycott here last year. Here's someone who's thought about another course of action: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em - up to a point: How about this for a solution: 1. We start a (say) monthly journal. 2. Set up a simple, lucrative payment for accepted articles. As a first stab, how about $10,000 paid personally to the researchers responsible. Similarly, each reviewer receives $2,000 for each article reviewed. I imagine this would be enough to attract some serious submissions. So serious, in fact, that universities and libraries would be obliged to subscribe (at drastically reduced prices). Oh yeah, and you can only submit articles if you or your institution is a subscriber. So every month hundreds of thousands of dollars would be distributed to scientists, and there would be a monthly prize pool for excellent research. And I bet the journal would be a cracking read (or as cracking as stiff scientific prose ever is, anyway). But why not take it a step further. 3. Assuming, of course, you executed that first step and attracted some worthwhile research, you could simply distribute all of the profits. So if you attracted 5% of the market… say 50% penetration at half price, you would be able to distribute 250m a year (I know, I know). I imagine a star researcher would prefer to get paid $200k rather than submit to Nature. And as the quality of the new journal improved, it could even end up becoming more prestigious. The first problem...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: The Scientific Literature Source Type: blogs