Pay Scientific Reports extra to bypass peer-review altogether
April 1, 2015
There’s been some concern over Scientific Reports‘ new scheme whereby authors submitting manuscripts can pay $750 to have them peer-reviewed more quickly. Some members of the editorial board have quit over this development, feeling that it’s unfair to authors who can’t pay. Myself, I feel it at least shows admirable audacity — NPG has found a way to monetise its own lethargy, which is surely what capitalism is all about.
The real problem with this scheme is that $750 is an awful lot to gamble, as a sort of “pre-APC”, at a point when you don’t know whether your article is actually going to be published or not. If the peer-review returns an unfavourable verdict it’s just money down the drain.
So I welcome today’s announcement that, for only a slightly higher payment of a round $1000, it’s now possible to bypass peer-review completely, and move directly to publication. This seems like a much fairer deal for authors, and of course it streamlines the publication process yet further. Now authors can obtain the prestigious Nature Publishing Group imprint in a matter of a couple of days.
Onward and upward!
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
April 1, 2015 at 1:40 am
Umm, there’s something distinctly FISHY, if you’ll pardon my French, about that!
Grin!
April 1, 2015 at 10:26 am
Big publishers are never gonna give up their ability to siphon money from researchers. They’ll always let us down, so we should just desert them.
April 1, 2015 at 11:08 am
uhm… April’s Fool much? :)
April 1, 2015 at 11:24 am
Rick Rolled guys…
April 1, 2015 at 1:21 pm
Bravo sir!
April 1, 2015 at 3:27 pm
Even tho’ I knew it was bogus I still had to click the link to see what it was. It was like a big red button that had “DO NOT PRESS” printed on it.
It has been many years since I was last Rick-rolled, partly because I am so much wiser but mostly because people don’t seem to be doing it any more.
April 1, 2015 at 3:29 pm
Sometimes you have to wait literally years for the right moment.
August 5, 2015 at 11:24 am
[…] course, the general feedback to this annoucement was not particularly positive (https://svpow.com/2015/04/01/pay-scientific-reports-extra-to-bypass-peer-review-altogether/), and it seems that Scientific Reports will not be carrying on with this process […]