Tim, Not only do we not get any money from the publisher, we have to *pay them* to publish our work! Publishers tend to charge by page and if you have any colored figures that charge goes way up. If you want to publish a 10 page paper, it may cost you $2000 depending on the journal. Journal publishers smartly exploit the fact that a measure of a scientists' productivity is through publishing. So they get people to do the research, write the article, and then pay to publish and they turn around and charge individuals $30 per paper or up to several hundred thousand dollars for a university annual subscription. That is why the journal PLoS (Public Library of Science) was born to allow free access to all. The researchers still need to pay them, but they don't turn around and make a profit from it. For the taxonomists out there, when a new species is submitted and > published, is there even a copyright on it? If so who owns it. > Once a name is published, it goes into the world of knowledge and the author holds the "copyright" (more like naming right) on it until someone renames the organism. Anyone may use the name for any purpose and the author does not get a penny. The only recognition a taxonomist gets for publishing a species is when you write their name after the species such as Albuca polyphylla Baker and usually only botanists follow this convention. It's a glorious field isn't it? Nhu On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 10:28 PM, Tim Chapman <tim@gingerwoodnursery.com>wrote: > If an author submits a new species for publication they aren't paid for > it. >