{"id":3948,"date":"2023-01-16T16:19:18","date_gmt":"2023-01-16T15:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.centre-mersenne.org\/costs-of-a-journal\/"},"modified":"2024-07-17T12:03:01","modified_gmt":"2024-07-17T10:03:01","slug":"costs-of-a-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.centre-mersenne.org\/en\/costs-of-a-journal\/","title":{"rendered":"Costs of a journal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Publishing a journal has a cost. Apart from the research time devoted to the production of scientific articles, what other expenses should you think about when you plan to create a scientific journal?<\/p>\n\n

Operational costs<\/h2>\n\n

The first item of expenditure is related to the staff<\/strong>. The salaries of the editorial board and the editorial secretariat represent the major part of the costs incurred. Indeed, the journal team spends a lot of time managing the flow of articles, correcting texts, bringing submissions up to standard, etc. The editing process takes time.<\/p>\n\n

While the peer review process is not remunerated, the journals are responsible for organising the evaluation<\/strong>, as pointed out in a document on scientific publications published by the INP<\/a>: \u00ab L\u2019\u00e9dition scientifique a un prix. Bien que le processus de peer-review soit non r\u00e9mun\u00e9r\u00e9, son organisation est prise en charge par les \u00e9diteurs. Rejeter des articles scientifiques par la voie de peer-review co\u00fbte cher \u00bb.<\/p>\n\n

Odile Contat and Anne-Solweig Gremillet point out in their study Publier : \u00e0 quel prix ? \u00c9tude sur la structuration des co\u00fbts de publication pour les revues fran\u00e7aises en SHS<\/a><\/em> : \u00ab On voit clairement dans l\u2019enqu\u00eate l\u2019importance du temps de travail effectu\u00e9 au niveau du secr\u00e9tariat de r\u00e9daction des revues au moment de la relecture et du travail avec les auteurs. Cette partie majeure du co\u00fbt \u00e9ditorial d\u2019un article, est dans la plupart des cas assur\u00e9e en interne par des professionnels de l\u2019\u00e9dition employ\u00e9s par les organismes de recherche et\/ou par les chercheurs et enseignants chercheurs impliqu\u00e9s dans les revues \u00bb.<\/p>\n\n

Publishing costs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

Other costs are related to the editing work<\/strong>. We have already mentioned the time spent on page layout, creating a customised layout, compliance with standards, etc. These tasks can be carried out by the journal team or by the team of the platform on which the journal is published.<\/p>\n\n

For example, the centre Mersenne<\/u><\/a> offers services associated with publication<\/strong>, support for the editorial process, an editing service, plagiarism detection, etc. The acquisition of tools such as editing software or a plagiarism detector should also be taken into account. Journal distribution platforms usually include editing software in their services: Open Edition uses Lodel<\/a>, the Mersenne Centre works with OJS<\/a>, Prairial has chosen M\u00e9topes<\/a>, etc.<\/p>\n\n

Dissemination costs<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n

The mode of distribution chosen, paper or digital, implies different costs.<\/p>\n\n

Paper distribution<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

The main cost of distributing a journal in paper form is the printing<\/strong> of the issues and sending<\/strong> them to subscribers.<\/p>\n\n

Digital dissemination<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n

When you publish your own scientific journal online, without using a distribution platform, the costs are multiple. One-off and recurrent costs must be taken into account.<\/p>\n\n

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One-off costs include the creation of the website<\/strong> to present the journals: either the site is created by in-house staff or an external company is used. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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There are also recurring costs, such as data hosting<\/strong>, which must be renewed each year with the hosting company, as well as the acquisition and renewal of the domain name<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n

On the other hand, as Odile Contat and Anne-Solweig Gremillet<\/a> point out: \u00ab Nous savons que les t\u00e2ches les plus externalis\u00e9es sont la mise en page<\/strong> (prise en charge par l\u2019\u00e9diteur ou l\u2019imprimeur) et la conversion XML<\/strong> (prise en charge par l\u2019\u00e9diteur ou la plateforme de diffusion num\u00e9rique), t\u00e2ches qui sont bien souvent refactur\u00e9es \u00e0 la revue ou d\u00e9duites des ventes papier ou \u00e9lectronique \u00bb. <\/p>\n\n

In addition to all this, there is the case of native paper journals that are converting to digital. While new issues can be created directly in digital format, the journal’s antecedents must be digitised<\/strong>, using a character recognition system, tagged, brought up to standard, etc. Beno\u00eet Epron underlines, in his Expertise de ressources pour l’\u00e9dition de revues num\u00e9riques<\/a><\/em> : \u00ab Globalement, le co\u00fbt de la num\u00e9risation r\u00e9side principalement dans le volume horaire qu’elle n\u00e9cessite. Cette \u00e9tape doit \u00e9galement s’effectuer avec des exigences de qualit\u00e9 impliquant un certain niveau d’\u00e9quipement et de comp\u00e9tence \u00bb. Thus, either the digitisation is carried out internally, in which case the purchase of the appropriate equipment and the time spent processing the documents must be taken into account, or it is carried out by an external service provider.<\/p>\n\n

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For more information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n