Hacker News Reader

Comment by cpncrunch | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

A quick google search quickly shows you are either uninformed or lying. Elsevier margin is at least 37% in 2018 and its profit has increased in 2022.

https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/pr...

Most journal reviewers and editors are academics who do the work as public service, i.e. free. Even top spots like editor in chief only get an honorarium of maybe 10k a year. Considering these people are the top of their field and can easily command 6-7 figures salary at minimum, that amount is nothing. Only very few journals have full time editors and even those end up relying on the volunteers to vet and review articles.

A full time professor is expected to be an editor for some journals. And these academics make up the bulk of "journal editors". But they would not list it as their jobs. I suspect that is why if you look for "editor jobs" you will get lobsided salary ranges that doesn't reflect reality.

We are talking here about the (net) profit margin, not the operating margin. The link you gives confirms the net margin is 19%. Please delete or edit the unfounded personal attack in your comment, as it is uncivil and inappropriate for this forum.

So now we are hiding behind semantics? If 942M is 37% operating profit then with a tax rate of 22% the net profit is still 29% for the publishing arm. Still way higher than 19%.

You are confusing the parent company with the publishing part for that 19%, which is the main subject here. You are uninformed.

No, the difference between operating profit and net profit is not simply tax. It is not "semantics". The net profit is the actual profit of the company. I see you haven't removed your personal attack above, so this is the end of the discussion. You clearly cannot argue logically and civilly, so it's a waste of time.

Whatever, it does not imply that any part of that expense is editorial. In fact it could be lobbying costs, marketing and sales. Or the cost of maintaining the paywalled system, and copyright lawyers.

The www was quite literally designed for sharing scientific papers. Hosting them is a 1990s problem. The real cost is in building a paywall and enforcing it

The academic editors. And the peer reviewers (who basically edit too).

Yes, peer reviewers tend to work for free. Can you give an example of an editor who works for free? I asked in the parent comment, but nobody has provided any examples (although they have downvoted it, oddly). I'm not aware of any editors who work for free for top tier journals.

https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salary/Elsevier-Editor-Salaries-E23...

Prestige journals with paid editors are the rare exception. Academic journals typically have active researchers volunteering as editors, because the prestige of a journal largely comes from the people in the editorial board.

Journals typically have an editor or editors in the field who is often a professor or researcher at some institution. They don't get paid.

It depends on the journal, but we're talking here about the journals such as Nature and Elsevier which charge large fees, and those journals do indeed pay their editors.

Elsevier literally has thousands of journals. They charge large fees but that goes to Elsevier for essentially hosting a website and gatekeeping. Maybe some of the really big journals like Nature pay but not those like "Journal of Algebra" or "Journal of Cleaner Production".

I'm sure they have people employed called "editors" but they are not the same as academic editors who decide what gets sent to reviewers.

>Maybe some of the really big journals like Nature pay but not those like "Journal of Algebra" or "Journal of Cleaner Production".

Ref? Elsevier (publisher of "Journal of Algebra") does pay their academic editors:

https://medium.com/@SiccodeKnecht/so-what-about-editor-compe...

There are tiers of editors - including both administrative and academic editors. The latter are rarely paid.

For example, I'm on the editorial boards of three journals: Epidemiology, PLoS Computational Biology, and Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology. I am compensated for none of them as an academic editor.

Elsevier's profit margin is 37% from what I can find.

https://www.google.com/finance/quote/REN:AMS

"Net profit margin: 19.04"

Disingenuous comparison. We are talking about Elsevier the journal publisher, not the parent conglomerate that also deal with legal, analytics, software and a bunch of other businesses.

You are confusing net profit margin with operating margin. The 37% figure is operating margin, whereas the net profit margin is 19%. From your link, it looks like the Scientific, Technical & Medical arm has identical margin to the parent corporation.

https://www.relx.com/~/media/Files/R/RELX-Group/documents/pr...

Look under the Scientific, Technical & Medical financial review. That is their scientific publishing arm.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com