High Cost of Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

It costs more to publish an article in a humanities or social sciences (HSS) journal than to publish one in a science, technical, or medical (STM) journal – over three times as much, according to a report soon to be released by the National Humanities Alliance in the United States.

The full report is to be released as soon as possible, according to NHA committee chairman William E. Davis. In the meantime, a summary by Jennifer Howard in July 20th's Chronicle of Higher Education [subscription required] has been generating much discussion and comment.

Given the high reported cost - an average $9,994 per article in HSS to an average $2,670 in STM - most conclude that the author-pays open access model that serves STM publications will not be feasible for HSS researchers, for whom less grant money is available in the first place to cover such costs. Nevertheless, the NHA chairman says that he and other HSS publishers will figure out some alternative open access model that will suit HSS. “We will,” Mr Davis said, “because we have to.”

Also mentioned in the report is the finding that acceptance rates are significantly lower for articles submitted to HSS journals - 11% for HSS, to STM's 42%. HSS researchers are thus further disadvantaged in an environment where numbers of publications are used as a measure of success.

It is on this last finding that Kathleen Fitzpatrick focuses on the MediaCommons blog. Fitzpatrick suggests that, as the pre-publication filtering needs of HSS publications are so strong and therefore so expensive, and as we are no longer constrained by the bounds of what we can print and ship, it might be better to eliminate all but the most functional pre-publication print review. A journal's editorial staff could look over each article to ensure that it is basically appropriate, then post it online and allow the readers to do the peer review. The Houghton report in the UK, summarised here, analysed and costed this model and concluded that "Open access self-archiving with overlay services would result in a saving of over 50% on subscription publishing."

An interesting alternative response to the report comes from Cathy Davidson, co-founder of the Humanities, Arts, Science & Technology Advanced Collaboratory. Davidson suggests in this blog post that "Perhaps universities simply need to consider the cost of running humanities and social science publishing as one of the intrinsic costs of these fields, offset by the enormous number of students we teach ... and the lower equipment and technology costs".