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Comment by OmicronCeti | Hacker News Reader

This site also seems to miscontrue what an APC is, and has always struck me as just papering over the problems in the publishing industry. For example: Some journals are open access (ie anyone can read the papers) and require a $2,500 APC to publish. Other models have a $0 APC and the journal paywalls the article to cover their overhead (and squeeze out disgusting profits)--this would not be open access.

However, these are frequently the same journal! It depends on the author's budget which model it follows.

The final model requires $0 APC and all articles are free to read for anyone (this is probably the HN ideal--as well as my own) but these are virtually non-existent since peer review/editing is time and labor intensive.

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Peer reviewing is typically unpaid in all cases. People are donating their time and the result of their hard research work to for profit businesses because it's the only way to get ahead (prestige).

Peer review should always be unpaid. Some journals will give you a $100 discount voucher, but I've never heard of anyone being directly compensated.

My own rule of thumb is that I have to to three peer-reviews for every one paper I publish, since my paper will have three reviewers (usually). That way I can stay at review/submission equilibrium!

Okay, I was actually responding to your "but these are virtually non-existent since peer review/editing is time and labor intensive", but I suppose you were referring to the process of finding peer reviewers.

Yeah most academics dread doing a peer review, because honestly if you actually get sent one that's a good fit, four out of five times the paper is in very rough shape, and the onus is on you the reviewer to point out and correct every problem.

This depends on the field. What I get sent as a peer reviewer is generally in pretty good shape already, and the author has simply missed a relevant publication here or there, or got a factoid wrong. So, the paper was already nearly publishable as it was, and it didn’t take me more than a few minutes really to make it even better. Often my work in these cases is its own reward.

I actually got sent my first outright awful paper recently, and there wasn’t in the end much of an onus on me. The flaws of the paper were so blatant that I could simply tell the editor that the entire premise was unsound without having to go into much detail, and the editor understood.

Most common is the hybrid model, where journals are paywalled but authors can make their article Open Access by paying a fee. This is ideal for the publisher, because they get money from both subscriptions and APCs, while universities pay double, once for the subscription and again for apcs.

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