This journal is commissioning a sequel to one of my smash hits. How much will they pay me for it? You can share negotiation strategies in the comments section.

I know it was a mistake to respond to this spam but I couldn’t resist . . . For the rest of my days, I will pay the price of being on the sucker list.

The following came in the junk mail the other day:

Dear Dr. Andrew Gelman,

My name is **, the editorial assistant of **. ** is a peer-reviewed, open access journal published by **.

I have had an opportunity to read your paper, “Why High-Order Polynomials Should Not Be Used in Regression Discontinuity Designs”, and can find that your expertise fits within the scope of our journal quite well. Therefore, you are cordially invited to submit new, unpublished manuscripts to **. If you do not have any at the moment, it is appreciated if you could keep our journal in mind for your future research outputs.

You may see the journal’s profile at ** and submit online. You may also e-mail submissions to **.

We are recruiting reviewers for the journal. If you are interested in becoming a reviewer, we welcome you to join us. Please find the application form and details at ** and e-mail the completed application form to **.

** is included in: · CrossRef; EBSCOhost; EconPapers · Gale’s Academic Databases · GetInfo; Google Scholar; IDEAS · J-Gate; Journal Directory · JournalTOCs; LOCKSS · MediaFinder®-Standard Periodical Directory · RePEc; Sherpa/Romeo · Standard Periodical Directory · Ulrich’s; WorldCat Areas include but are not limited to: · Accounting; · Economics · Finance & Investment; · General Management; · Management Information Systems; · Business Law; · Global Business; · Marketing Theory and Applications; · General Business Research; · Business & Economics Education; · Production/Operations Management; · Organizational Behavior & Theory; · Strategic Management Policy; · Labor Relations & Human Resource Management; · Technology & Innovation; · Public Responsibility and Ethics; · Public Administration and Small Business Entrepreneurship.

Please feel free to share this information with your colleagues and associates.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

** Editorial Assistant ** ——————————————- ** Tel: ** ext.** Fax: ** E-mail 1: ** E-mail 2: ** URL: **

Usually I just delete these things, but just the other day we had this discussion of some dude who was paid $100,000 to be the second author on a paper. Which made me wonder how much I could make as a sole author!

And this reminded me of this other guy who claimed that scientific citations are worth $100,000 each. A hundred grand seems like the basic unit of currency here.

So I sent a quick response:

Hi–how much will you pay me to write an article for your journal? AG

I’m not expecting $100,000 as their first offer—they’ll probably lowball me at first—but, hey, I can negotiate. They say the most important asset in negotiation is the willingness to say No, and I’m definitely willing to say No to these people!

Just a few hours later I received a reply! Here it is:

Dear Dr. Andrew Gelman,

Thanks for your email. We charge the Article Processing Charge (Formatting and Hosting) of 100USD for per article.

Welcome to submit your manuscript to our journal. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Best Regards,

** Editorial Assistant ** ——————————————- ** Tel: ** ext.** Fax: ** E-mail 1: ** E-mail 2: ** URL: **

I don’t get it. They’re offering me negative $100? That makes no sense? What next, they’ll offer to take my (fully functional) fridge off my hands for a mere hundred bucks?? In what world am I supposed to pay them for the fruits of my labor?

So I responded:

No, I would only provide an article for you if you pay me. It would no make sense for me to pay you for my work.

No answer yet. If they do respond at some point, I’ll let you know. We’ll see what happens. If they offer me $100, I can come back with a counter-offer of $100,000, justifying it by the two links above. Then maybe they’ll say they can’t afford it, they’ll offer, say, $1000 . . . maybe we can converge around $10K. I’m not going to share the lowest value I’d accept—that’s something the negotiation books tell you never ever to do—but I’ll tell you right now, it’s a hell of a lot more than a hundred bucks.

P.S. That paper on higher-order polynomials that they scraped carefully vetted for suitability for their journal . . . according to Google Scholar it has 1501 citations, which implies a value of $150,100,000, according to the calculations referred to above. Now, sure, most of that value is probably due to Guido, my collaborator on that paper, but still . . . 150 million bucks! How hard could it be to squeeze out a few hundred thousand dollars for a sequel? It says online that Knives Out grossed $311.4 million, and Netflix paid $469 million for the rights for Knives Out 2 and 3. If this academic publisher doesn’t offer me a two-paper deal that’s at least in the mid four figures, my agent and I will be taking our talents to Netflix.