One of the major complaints about the current system of academic publishing, writes Kent Anderson, is that authors are not paid. So, he asks, what if they were paid? It's obviously a straw man question, and not surprisingly, Anderson treats it that way. But the consequences would be predictable: it would cost the system roughly an extra billion dollars or so, increasing costs between 9-15%. There would also be more overhead and numerous opportunities (and temptations) to game the system. Fair enough. But isn't all this the current result of paying publishers? Sure, the system could go wrong if we start paying people. Bloated subscription fees, pseudo-journals, bundling - that's what happened when we started paying publishers.
Anderson also writes that the current incentives "allow authors to shift risk to publishers for publishing their papers, and allow editors and researchers to focus on core scientific and intellectual issues." But authors already assume a great deal of risk, arguably much more than publishers, as each paper represents an investment of time and resources to produce. It means authors have to find funding elsewhere - from an institution, a foundation, a corporate sponsor. There is virtually no such thing as an independent researcher because there is no direct reward for publication. (I'm not arguing here that authors should be paid, but rather than Anderson's argument against paying them falls far short of being conclusive).
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