Friday Fun: How to Fund Your Data Analyst

Remember Amos Smith's Editorial, discussed here yesterday?

(and here, and here, and here)

I wondered, on Twitter: How many submissions does Organic Letters get in a year, anyway?

Sonja Krane, a JACS editor, set me straight:

@seearroh Journal submission statistics aren't publicly available. Sorry I can't be more helpful in this case!
— Sonja Krane (@sonjakrane) June 6, 2013

Rats, foiled again! But then, an interesting tidbit from Stu Cantrill over at Nature Chemistry
(N.B. Stu used to work at OL):

@seearroh When I was there, accept rate was getting down to 50%. I suspect now 30-40%, so look at papers published in 2012 & go from there.
— Stuart Cantrill (@stuartcantrill) June 7, 2013 

Hmm, so all I have to do is count. In 2012, Organic Letters published 24 issues, which seem to have an average article count ~80 / per.* So that's 2,000 articles / year, give or take 100. Now, let's assume Stu's lower range (30% acceptance) - that's 7,000 submissions. Back of the envelope, I'd guess an average Supporting Info section to clock in at around 40 pages nowadays.

That's 280,000 pages of SI.
Pity the poor Data Analyst.

But...what a great way to FUND this potentially burgeoning "alternative" career! A nominal fee of, say, $0.10 / SI page - price of a photocopy from way back, kids - would immediately bring $30K into the journal's coffers. A $3 "data verification" fee per manuscript brings another $21K. Not big money, but we're now into the realm of serious subsidy for someone's salary.


Readers: Would you pay $7.00 to submit your OL manuscript?

* [(Dec 21 + July 6 + Jan 6 + Apr 20) - (corrections + editorials)] = 318 articles / 4 = 79.5