vlsi design

The House of Commons (U.K.) Select Committee on Science and Technology investigated Open Access publishing alternatives, and pursuant to this obtained written evidence from Nature Publishing Group consisting of answers to specific questions about "pay to publish." Here are excerpts from the document. Given the current discussion on Open Access publishing, this may be of interest to you.

Nature Publishing Group's Publishing Model: Evidence to the House of Commons, April 2004.

Question: You stated that, under a pay-to-publish system, Nature would have to charge authors between £10K and £30k per article. Can you supply a breakdown of the costs that would necessitate this charge?

The £30,000 figure was arrived at simply by dividing the annual income of Nature (£30 million) by the number of research papers published (1,000). This assumes that author fees would be the only source of revenue (ie. a totally open access model).

The £10,000 figure is derived from estimates of the costs of selecting, reviewing, editing, designing and producing the research article element of Nature and the amount NPG would need to charge in order to cover these expenses adequately...

The reason for these high costs is the high investment Nature is obliged to make in the selection process, including de-selecting over 90% of the papers received. At present, Nature receives more than 10,000 papers per annum through its open submission policy.

Question: What proportion of the average article cost is taken up with peer review? Can you supply a breakdown of the costs of peer review?

Unlike many other journals where peer review is a distinct and sometimes external process, Nature does not use external academic editors, or have an external editorial board. Internally, it has a large number of highly qualified, experienced, professional editors as well as supporting administration staff who manage the peer review process. However, the actual reviewers used are professional scientists who are carefully selected by Nature's internal editors. The staff cost for this activity represents 43% of the total cost for the creation of peer reviewed content for Nature....

Question: What provision do you make for teaching staff to reproduce material you have published as part of undergraduate and postgraduate student packs and courses?

All NPG authors of original research retain their copyright (they provide NPG with a "licence to publish"). As copyright holders, they, and any academic institution where they work at the time, may reproduce the authors' contribution for the purpose of course teaching. Thereafter, use of copyright materials in the U.K. is subject to copyright law and fair dealing ('fair use' in the US), which provides exceptions for the "non-commercial" reproduction of selected articles for teaching and private study.

I just reproduced the snippits that I thought were particularly interesting. The rest of the official document can be found at the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Here.

ShareThis

Comments

Here in the UK, back in 2003 the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee launched an investigation into scholarly publishing. Their first step was to hold a series of oral evidence gathering sessions and the first of these was with a group of publishers, including the Managing Director of Wiley Europe, John Jarvis. On speaking about public access, Jarvis said:

"I will say again; let us be careful because this rather enticing statement that everybody should be able to see everything could lead to chaos. Speak to people in the medical profession, and they will say the last thing they want are people who may have illnesses reading this information, marching into surgeries and asking things. We need to be careful with this very, very high-level information."

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/uc399-i/uc39902.htm Question 19

I am reliably informed that there were gasps around the room as he said it and those there could only believe that it is a view he now regrets vocalizing! (The Committee�s report is still worth reading if you haven�t seen it

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399.pdf)

Posted by: McDawg | July 5, 2008 4:18 PM

With all these pounds/dollars being thrown around by Nature, you would think a few would have found their way to the reviewers...you know, the scientists who do the 'actual' work to decide whether an article is worthy of publication in their august publications.

In all my years of acting as a referee for journals, they've never offered any compensation. Perhaps I've been mislead...maybe I should have gone after 'a piece of the action', like the rest of them.

As it is, I think I'll step up my submission to open access journals, which looks to be a revolution in publishing, every bit as much as the Gutenberg printing press.

Thank you for this and so many other post I have enjoyed. Please excuse me if I might come on a little naive but I am totally uneducated in this field
After reading the old post you referred to there is one thing troubling me: Here where I live in Iceland we have an avi-fauna that has been semi-isolated only since post glacial times, yet we see a considerable increase in size of many of our bird species, even some of those that are more or less migratory. Also noteworthy is that I believe that the Icelandic race of the Common Long Tailed Field Mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus, which probably came here first with the settlers only about 1100 years ago, now shows a considerable increase in size from her relatives in Scandinavia. This is always explained as a thermodynamic adaptation. When considering that some of the birds mentioned, like the Redshank, Tringa totanus, probably had very limited predation pressure for most of these 10 thousand years, this sounds very plausible.
Now since climate has had this quite dramatic effect here (given that this is right), could the climate, i.e. cold, have had a greater role to play in the problems you are discussing in you blog than I am able to read from it or is it considered a minimal factor? Sitting here in the warmth of my home with cold weather outside, I cannot but think how terribly pressured by the winter weather the wild animals are outside my window. Is there a reason not to believe that large herbivores would rapidly increase in size and diversify primarily because of the climate factors and then being followed by the raptors increasing size rather than raptors having such a strong effect on prey size?
Again thanks to all of you at Scienceblogs for the wealth of informative discussion you bring to us peripheral amateurs. It makes a huge difference. Keep up the good work!

Posted by: Jon Hlidberg | December 31, 2007 4:23 AM

Re: printing of the pdf, this print on demand sitelooks interesting:

http://www.lulu.com/en/products/posters/

Don't know about the copyright though

Posted by: martin | December 31, 2007 4:55 AM

Jon: All good points. The interaction between climate, climate change and evolution is fascinating but difficult, difficult almost to the point that some people seem to be giving up on it.

FREAKING out because the SPM examination is around the corner and you’ve been spending more time on Facebook and World of Warcraft than your textbooks?

Despair not, because experts Sunny Yee (Physics and Additional Maths) and A. Alagesan (Chemistry), together with other Science and Math specialists, have pooled their extensive experience and knowledge to come up with a special six-edition SPM series. The other writers contributing to this must-have pullout are Mallika Vasugi, Alicia Tan and Felicia Puri.

Unlike previous years, these invaluable revision materials will not be published in StarEducation. Instead, starting July 14 till Oct 13, there will be 16 extra pages dedicated specifically to SPM revision in F4F5 — The Star’s Maths and Science guide for upper secondary students.

Published every second and fourth Monday of the month, F4F5 has been bumped up to 56 pages to include Physics, Biology, Modern Mathematics, Chemistry, General Science and Additional Mathematics ‘hot’ exam questions and sample answers.

Learn techniques to score full marks for structured questions. Find out common traps sneaky examiners throw into exam papers to trick students. Find out which topics are “hot” this year. And reap the benefits of in-depth analyses of frequent mistakes by our five specialist writers in the field.

Here’s a sneak peek of how a student can miss the full two marks for this Chemistry question, which appears in July 14’s F4F5:

The diagram below shows two bell jars, A and B.

Bell jar A is filled with bromine vapour while bell jar B is filled with air.

Both the jars are separated by a lid.

State your initial observations. [2 marks]

Frequent mistake:

It looks brown in colour.

Tutor’s comment:

The answer is too vague. Which of the jars, A or B, is brown? This is not specified.

In cases of two or more items being given or questioned in an exam, students should take extra effort to specifically identify the items referred to.

Correct answer:

The content of bell jar A appears dark brown while the content of bell jar B is colourless.

With sample answers and tutor’s simple and direct comments, students will obtain a better grasp of the topic and improve the odds of not repeating the mistakes!

The Star launched F123 and F4F5 this year to cater to students in all secondary levels after the success of its F1F4 pullout in 2006 and 2007. Published during the school term, F4F5 offers syllabus-based Physics, Biology and Modern Mathematics on the second Monday of the month and Chemistry, General Science and Additional Mathematics on the fourth Monday.

Also included are learning tips, enrichment exercises, pertinent notes, activities related to real-life phenomena as well as informative and interesting topics for general knowledge.

The 40-page F123 pullout, published every first and third Monday of the month, contains Science and Maths topics for Form One, Two and Three students in every issue. F123 and F4F5 are included free for schools that buy The Star at a special discounted price. Orders are by school subscription only. Meaning, you’ve got to place your orders through your schools. Students and parents, do talk to your child’s teachers, principal or even the Parent-Teacher Association committee members.

For details and orders of F123 and F4F5, call Star Publications (Malaysia) Bhd’s Customer Care Unit at 03-7967 1777 (direct line) or 03-7967 1388, ext 1152 or 1160 from 9am to 5.30pm, Mondays to Fridays.

india