They want me to send them free material and pay for the privilege

Since we’re on the topic of publishers asking me for money . . . The other day I received the following email:

Mimi Liljeholm has sent you a message. Please click ‘Reply’ to send a direct response.

Dear Prof Gelman,

In collaboration with Frontiers in Psychology, we are organizing a Research Topic titled “Causal discovery and generalization”, hosted by Mimi Liljeholm and Marc Buehner. As host editor, I would like to encourage you to contribute to this topic.

A brief description of the topic is provided on our homepage on the Frontiers website (section “Frontiers in Cognition”). This is also where all articles will appear after peer-review and where participants in the topic will be able to hold relevant discussions: http://www.frontiersin.org/Cognition/researchtopics/Causal_discovery_and_generaliz/1906

Frontiers, a Swiss open-access publisher, recently partnered with Nature Publishing Group to expand its researcher-driven Open Science platform. Frontiers articles are rigorously peer-reviewed, can be disseminated freely and are widely read by your colleagues and by the broader scientific and medical research communities.

The idea behind a research topic is to create an organized, comprehensive collection of several contributions, as well as a forum for discussion and debate. Contributions can be articles describing original research, methods, hypothesis & theory, opinions, etc.

Frontiers will also compile an e-book, as soon as all contributing articles are published, that can be used in classes, be sent to foundations that fund your research, to journalists and press agencies, or to any number of other organizations.

As such, a manuscript accepted for publication incurs a publishing fee, which varies depending on the article type. Research Topic manuscripts receive a significant discount on publishing fees. Please take a look at this fee table: http://www.frontiersin.org/about/PublishingFees.

Once published, your articles will remain free to access for all readers, and will be indexed in PubMed and other academic archives. As an author in Frontiers, you retain the copyright to your own papers and figures.

I would be delighted if you considered participating in this Research Topic.

Please note that the deadline for abstract submission is on Oct 31, 2013 and that for manuscript submission is on Mar 31, 2014

Since I am using the Frontiers system to manage this topic, I would really appreciate if you could also please indicate your decision by clicking on one of the links below.

AGREE to Participate

http://www.frontiersin.org/AcceptContributor.aspx?activationkey=1b2e4bcc-a1e9-4ac8-b5be-886f7f1211e1

DECLINE to Participate

http://www.frontiersin.org/DeclineContributor.aspx?activationkey=1b2e4bcc-a1e9-4ac8-b5be-886f7f1211e1

Best,

Mimi Liljeholm Guest Associate Editor, Frontiers in Cognition

I was like, wha—? But I felt like maybe I was missing something, so I clicked ‘Reply’ to send a direct response:

Wait a minute, I’m confused here. You’re asking me to send you free material which you can publish, but you want me to _pay you_ for this? This does not make sense to me! AG

I have received no reply, so I’m assuming they didn’t have a good answer to my question.

The whole thing is just stunning to me. I just love that bit, “Research Topic manuscripts receive a significant discount on publishing fees.” Wow, a discount! Does QVC still exist?

The post They want me to send them free material and pay for the privilege appeared first on Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.