A selection from the journal’s website.
This is the story of the Journal of CENTRUM Cathedra (JCC): The Business and Economics Research Journal (a journal with a subtitle). This is a relatively new business and economics journal published out of a ritzy suburb of Lima, Peru. The publisher is CENTRUM Católica, otherwise known as the Centro de Negocios de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
According to the call for papers posted on the journal’s website, successful submissions earn their authors an award of US $2,500 upon publication of the paper. Not only that, but peer reviewers get $500. This is the exact opposite of the gold open-access model and is very rare in scholarly publishing.
A year ago, I submitted an article to the Journal of Information Ethics. It was accepted but hasn’t been published yet, and I was told that there would be a $50 honorarium upon publication. I generally get paid a small stipend for articles I publish in magazines, such as American Libraries.
I called the center and spoke to the assistant managing editor, Mr. Juan Carlos Paliza. He hinted that the payments were a temporary measure to help the journal get established by publishing the highest-quality articles.
Perhaps they are trying to smooth their way into getting an impact factor by having excellent articles that will likely be cited a lot. I asked whether the policy had generated an abundance of article submissions, and he responded that it had not — yet.
I wonder about the ethical aspects of this practice. If the payments are being made to attract papers with the potential of many citations, then it may be questionable — it may be seen as an attempt to game the impact factor.
The journal also has a call for reviewers and promises to pay $500 for each manuscript reviewed.
I can’t see any ethical problem here. Just because academic journals don’t usually pay authors doesn’t mean that they can’t or shouldn’t. Book publishers do if there are enough sales. Any sensible journal invites contributions from prominent authors in order to get off to a good start. It’s not gaming the system.