Re: A WASTE OF TIME?

["Jerry D. Harris" <102354.2222@compuserve.com>]

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Message text written by INTERNET:david_krentz@fa.disney.com

"Just out of curiosity, what kind of costs are involved in publishing.  I
am 
by no means an acedemic, but just wish to know what those of you that are
go 
through to get information to me."


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        It depends on the journal and the length of the submission.  Longer
papers usually incur page costs, which can be expensive (the Journal of
Vertebrate Paleontology, which has excellent text, drawing, half-tone, and
photographic resolution printing on a nice, durable, glossy paper) are
currently running somewhere between $120-150 _per_page_ (page costs are
what the submitting authors must pay the journal to cover the costs of
producing the paper in the actual journal).  If the authors want reprints
to distribute to fellow scientists, which is the usual thing authors do to
(a) be nice to fellow scientists and (b) get their name out there and
establish a reputation, then they're looking at additional costs.  Reprint
charges depend on the length of the paper; from my own experience, a short,
8-10 page paper in a journal like _Neues Jahrbuch_ will run about $2 each,
and you can only get them in bundles of 100.  And lest we forget, much of
the time, the author(s) of the paper are paying from their own pocket to
buy film to take photos, get them developed, and sometimes even paying
artists to illustrate specimens (as a matter of course, it's generally
_far_ cheaper to publish line- or stipple-drawings of specimens than it is
to publish photographs)...and don't forget the time involved to type the
manuscript!

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                     Jerry D. Harris
                 Fossil Preparation Lab
          New Mexico Museum of Natural History
                   1801 Mountain Rd NW
               Albuquerque  NM  87104-1375
                 Phone:  (505) 899-2809
                  Fax:  (505) 841-2866
               102354.2222@compuserve.com