Do academic researchers get paid when someone buys their article from a database?

[pete6032]

Question is in the title. If I find an academic journal article online behind a paywall, and then pay the $20 or whatever it costs to download the article, does any of that money go to the researchers, or does it all go to LexisNexus or Elsevir or ScienceDirect, etc?

I have occasionally found academics are willing to send me an article for free if I email them directly and I tell them I cannot find the article online anywhere. I'm surprised when they send it over at no cost.

 

[Brainonska511]

No - generally, when a paper is submitted to a journal, you sign over the publishing rights. The publisher gets to keep the costs of selling the article as payment for hosting/printing/etc...

I can safely say, I have never received a royalty for any of the papers I've ever published.

Though, if you were to buy someone's thesis through a service like ProQuest, the author may get a royalty. I remember this being an option (pay-to access vs open access) when I was submitting my thesis to graduate.

 

[Chaotic42]

I was wondering about this myself. I was looking at this thesis (https://books.google.com/books?id=M...XAhXSUd8KHZEdA4UQ6AEIOTAD#v=onepage&q&f=false), which is $43 from Google or around $100 at Amazon. I wonder if he'd get paid when someone purchases the hardcover book from Amazon or Springer.

 

[DigDog]

No - generally, when a paper is submitted to a journal, you sign over the publishing rights.

this *could* be, but i admit i am fully ignorant of the actual facts.

i assume you produce papers based on an accord with your sponsor, be it a school, university, research lab. if someone buys the paper from an online depository, your sponsor keeps the money, but in exchange gives you your wage.
as for scientific publications, you simply submit, and if it is in the interest of the magazine (to draw in more readers), they publish you. Your rights remain your own.

 

[Brainonska511]

this *could* be, but i admit i am fully ignorant of the actual facts.

i assume you produce papers based on an accord with your sponsor, be it a school, university, research lab. if someone buys the paper from an online depository, your sponsor keeps the money, but in exchange gives you your wage.
as for scientific publications, you simply submit, and if it is in the interest of the magazine (to draw in more readers), they publish you. Your rights remain your own.

No, this is how it actually is (I have first hand experience in this) - researchers get $0 when someone buys the paper. And if we want to reuse a figure in a review article, we need to get copyright permission from the original publisher, even if we wrote the original article too.

 

[DigDog]

ok but, is it the same whether the paper is published by say, MIT, and Nature? i can see thsi happening when published by a body that has a claim to the paper (they pay your wages), but a magazine makes money by having your paper in it. In the regular press it works this way. My dad owned a magazine a long time ago, and they sure as hell didn't acquire the rights of stories they published (it was a scifi magazine)

 

[DigDog]

derp, double-post. what is this, 1999 ?

 

[Brainonska511]

ok but, is it the same whether the paper is published by say, MIT, and Nature? i can see thsi happening when published by a body that has a claim to the paper (they pay your wages), but a magazine makes money by having your paper in it. In the regular press it works this way. My dad owned a magazine a long time ago, and they sure as hell didn't acquire the rights of stories they published (it was a scifi magazine)

Yes. You publish in Nature or you publish in JACS, the deal is basically the same for research publications regardless of your sponsor institution. The authors don't get paid, and there is often a fee for publishing. The publisher also gets many rights covering republishing and overall use.

 

[DigDog]

that is insane. you would be giving away your work to a third party just so other people can read it. And the requirement to later pay to use your own material??

 

[Brainonska511]

that is insane. you would be giving away your work to a third party just so other people can read it. And the requirement to later pay to use your own material??

You don't have to pay to use the content yourself. There are exceptions, like if you're going to be presenting. And you can usually give your paper away for free on your own lab's website. And when you're writing a thesis, you basically get a free license. A review article, you might need to pay to reuse figures (varies from journal to journal).

And honestly, it just wouldn't be a big revenue stream for researchers. We publish in these journals to bring the knowledge we've gained to a wider audience of scientists, not to make money.

 

[Ns1]

We publish in these journals to bring the knowledge we've gained to a wider audience of scientists, not to make money.

Well that's just silly.

 

[lxskllr]

Well that's just silly ironic.

Wants widespread use, locks behind a paywall.

 

[Brainonska511]

Wants widespread use, locks behind a paywall.

We don't lock it behind the paywall. That's on the publisher. Plus, all NIH funded research is available through PubMed - sometimes free immediately, sometimes there is a 6-12 month embargo on the free version.

Most people that will be interested in the work have institutional subscriptions. And if you want the right people to see your work, you need to be putting it in the right place.

 

[uclaLabrat]

As a chemist with several papers, everything brain has said is 100% accurate.

 

[sandorski]

Well damn, my Study on How to Make Big $ by Publishing Scientific Papers is going into the trash bin.....

 

[Chaotic42]

Is there any big push to set up an open publishing system, or is a big part of the cost having quality review? I've read some really horrible quality papers which shouldn't have been published, but I wonder if the quality of search engines these days could make up for not being published in a prestigious but expensive journal.

 

[Brainonska511]

Is there any big push to set up an open publishing system, or is a big part of the cost having quality review? I've read some really horrible quality papers which shouldn't have been published, but I wonder if the quality of search engines these days could make up for not being published in a prestigious but expensive journal.

Some open access journals are fine, some are crap. Some paywall journals are good, some are bad.

I've read good and bad papers in both types.

There are some that want to publish more open access, but it's hard to change the system. The big key in publishing research is to reach your target audience- people in your field and related fields.

 

[Chaotic42]

Some open access journals are fine, some are crap. Some paywall journals are good, some are bad.

I've read good and bad papers in both types.

There are some that want to publish more open access, but it's hard to change the system. The big key in publishing research is to reach your target audience- people in your field and related fields.

I've had some discussions with my undergrad advisor and it all sounds like a mess. I'm finishing up my Masters and thinking about a PhD. Some of the publishing backlogs published in the American Mathematical Society magazine are absurd. Like 30-40 months.

 

[Brainonska511]

I've had some discussions with my undergrad advisor and it all sounds like a mess. I'm finishing up my Masters and thinking about a PhD. Some of the publishing backlogs published in the American Mathematical Society magazine are absurd. Like 30-40 months.

That is a long backlog. Nature and Science papers can take up to a year from initial submission. Other journals have faster turn around. It also depends on the field