Thiago Carvalho @cyrilpedia@social.cleverlibre.org

@brembs @minimammoth I can't speak for all publications, but Nature does pay journalists for the front matter content - these are commissioned pieces with a rate attached. So that actually is a legitimate cost (if you consider the content valuable). But it absolutely does not have to be packaged with the original research papers. I think this is a holdover from when they (the two weeklies) had a broader individual subscription base of people who read them as magazines.

@minimammoth Thank you - and I hope to have more convos here. Cheers

@minimammoth Yes, and now they often belong to ever larger conglomerates (and I suppose ultimately to the Scheinhardt wig company)

@minimammoth The only other scientific journal where for the last almost 30 years I've consistently read the front matter is Current Biology. (and back matter, the last page with Sidney Brenner was a reason to wait for the next issue at my university library)

@minimammoth Definitely is the case now - but I do remember a time when individual subscriptions (I had one) the Science and Nature were not uncommon, and they were read as magazines for the weekly news, book reviews, interviews etc and then you read the papers that caught your eye or were in your field. That could still work, I think - but with OA and preprints, that means enough subscribers for the news and front matter. I don't know if the numbers could work, but they might

@minimammoth The niche they fill in this respect is science journalism for a scientifically literate readership - so it's not like SciAm or the (again great) work of people like Carl Zimmer or Ed Yong. The economics of all this is a mess, but it was less complicated before commercial publishers began the brand driven expansion phase

@minimammoth sorry - one pandemic, one epidemic.