I’m happy to say that this week we sent out our first round of royalty payments to authors of original articles in CSH Protocols. Because we’re doing some reprinting of material from our already-published laboratory manuals, we built in a system to pay royalties to the editors of those manuals. We chose at the time to extend those royalties to authors of new material as well. The idea of writing up methods isn’t something that immediately occurs to most laboratories–they’re usually more interested in publishing data, so we’re hoping that these royalty payments will at least serve as something of a motivation for publishing (and continuing to publish) protocols with us. We’re not talking about huge sums of money, but as I recall from my graduate student days, every little bit helps. It also addresses one of the complaints one hears about us greedy science publishers–that we fail to compensate scientists for the work they’ve put into the publication and keep all the cash for ourselves. While CSHL Press is part of a not-for-profit research institute, and any money we make from our publications goes to fund research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, we’re very curious to see what happens from this experiment in revenue-sharing. Does this make a difference to you as an author?
This set of royalties covers the calendar year 2007. A portion of our subscription revenue is set aside and divided among all authors/editors based on the usage of their individual articles during that calendar year. Those who published articles late in the year may not see much in terms of revenue given the relatively small time scale that their articles were available, but hopefully their articles will see a little more use in 2008.
August 19, 2008 at 6:17 pm
David,
This is a great idea and an experiment I will enjoy watching. Protocols are in a little different category than general science publications so providing this little bit of incentive would seem to be a real win-win situation.
How does the royalty system work? Are they based on website statistics (i.e. downloads) or are they based on other criteria?
These sorts of innovative approaches are why I keep checking in at CSH Protocols.
August 19, 2008 at 8:12 pm
We are something of a different beast than a data-driven journal, and the process of procuring articles ends up being more like the acquisition of book chapters than the usual journal submission process.
Royalties for now are based on site statistics, on the actual accesses of a given article. A portion of our subscription revenue is set aside and divided among authors based on the percentage of total article use that their articles made up. It’s worked well so far, but we’re keeping our eyes open for other potential methods (and making sure that the system we have in place isn’t getting gamed).
August 21, 2008 at 7:08 pm
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