Paul MacDaragh Ryan

The Robertson Lab opens today in @blizard_inst @QMULBartsTheLon @QMUL! We will study how the human microbiome in early life contributes to child growth using large-scale metagenomics & co-culture assays to study host-microbe interactions in the gut. Reach out if interested!🦠🔬

All Editors of NeuroImage (IF = 7) resigned because Elsevier didn’t want to reduce the hefty publication fee (it’s $3,450 !!!). And then started their OWN journal! Just a reminder - the profit margin for academic publishing often reaches 40% (while for non-academic - 15%). Obviously, who would reduce the profits to 15% only to make authors happy? It’s all about business. Profits should NOT drop. This is one of the reasons why we have to pay A LOT to publish an open-access #research paper. Let's look at numbers. NeuroImage publishes ~1,000 articles per year and it’s fully open access. Thus, it gives ~ $3.5 million in direct revenue from APC. In the letter, the editors say that “the estimates of direct article costs at relevant journals are generally around $1,000 or lower”, which gives you some idea of profit margins just from this journal. At first, the editors proposed a compromise by reducing the APC to $2000. However, after some “battles”, Elsevier stated that “the APC would not be reduced because they believe that market forces support the current APC”. Outcome of this situation? 1. All 40 editors have resigned. 2. All editors decided to start a new NON-profit journal “Imaging Neuroscience”: - It's under MIT Press - Fees <50% of the current APC for NeuroImage - The overall scope, quality level and entire editorial team will be the same as previously for NeuroImage - The APC will be WAIVED for low- or middle-income countries. My thoughts: 1. It is a great move by the editors. As I know how academics love to disagree with each other, I find this cooperative nature of their efforts mind-blowing. 2. This sets an example of how an editorial team can make their own journal. 3. This can be the beginning of a major shift in academic publishing. Big changes take much time. But milestone events are often noticeable, and this resignation is clearly one of them. Finally, all this suggests that prestige of a journal should NOT originate only from the impact factor and editorial board members. It should be also based on how accessible the APC is for an average research group. #science #AcademicTwitter