As I noted about two weeks ago, a philosopher at Georgetown had called my attention to a publication, The Undergraduate Quarterly, that was soliciting student essays without noting up front that it was charging a $35.00 application fee. The editor of that journal, a recent graduate of UCLA, Andrew Zaky has written to me to explain the practice. Here is Mr. Zaky's response:
"A few days ago, Brian Leiter and other professors harshly criticized The Undergraduate Quarterly Journal because students who submit articles for inclusion into the journal are required to pay a $35.00 application fee. A practice not normally taken up in academic journals, charging an application fee serves multiple purposes for The Undergraduate Quarterly. First, it limits the number of essays being submitted to the journal thereby making it possible and practical for the Editorial Board to sensibly review a shortened list of essay. If anyone and everyone were allowed to submit articles, the journal would be unable to feasibly sustain itself. While it may seem that a profit is being made on the application fee, this is simply not the case. Last quarter, 78 applicants each paid $25.00 to submit their articles to The Undergraduate Quarterly. That is roughly $1,950.00 in application fee revenue. Yet, this revenue was not nearly enough to pay for our $5,500.00 in merit-based scholarships (given to the best authors of the publication), $5,000.00 in IT, $2,200.00 in attorneys fees (for assistance in copyright law, $6,340.00 in printing fees), $1,000.00 for mailing, not to mention the extra several hundreds of dollars in general overhead.
"The bottom-line is, the journal costs close to $25,000.00 to create, we don’t ask our authors to subside some of the publishing costs like other journals do, all of the editors work pro-bono with no obvious intentions of retroactive quid pro quo, the application fee does not scratch the surface of our operating expenses, and yet we are constantly placed in the position to defend ourselves. I am personally to blame for our situation as I failed to take the proper precautions in explaining the application fee in both our press releases and on the website. In the future, I will be sure to make our intentions very clear with a more in depth explanation to be placed on the website. I hope professors and others in the world of academia will not simply criticize the merits of the journal based on the fact that it has an application fee and I would finally like to say that while an imposed application fee is not a normal practice taken up in academic publishing, it does not mean it is automatically wrong to do so. I would like to personally thank Brian Leiter for giving me the opportunity to defend the journal against this thematic and recurring criticism. I would be more than happy to hear comments on how we may be able to limit submissions without an application fee, and still make the journal accessible on the national level."
Mr. Zaky can be reached at andyzaky at undergraduatequarterly-dot-com.
I also received the following letter from another UCLA student who has published in the journal:
"My name is Bryan Caforio and I am just getting set to start my fourth and final year at UCLA. I am majoring in Political Science with a focus in International Relations and receiving a minor in Environmental Studies. I am a captain on the UCLA Mock Trial team which won the National Championship last year, and I am planning to attend law school next year.... I attend UCLA but I had never met Mr. Zaky before my involvement with the journal. He was either a year or two ahead of me I believe. Even after becoming involved with the journal, however, I have still only met him one time when we got lunch so he could give me my scholarship check.
"I submitted an article to The Undergraduate Quarterly for their latest issue, and based on my experience with this journal there is no way it can be called a scam. While there was an application fee to submit an essay, I personally was awarded a scholarship of $500 for my essay on US Foreign Relations. There were three other authors who received $500 prizes for their articles, and
there was even a top scholarship awarded for $2,000. Assuming everyone
who is listed as a scholarship recipient was actually paid just as I was, that would mean there was a minimum of $4,000 in scholarships given away in the past issue to the main award winners. In addition to the main awards however, there was also a $100 award given to every article that was printed in the journal, which was 13 for Volume 1, bringing the scholarship amount up to $5,300. The application fee was only $25 when I applied, which would mean there would have had to have been 212 applicants solely to break even on covering only the money given out in scholarships. In addition to the scholarship money that was given out by the journal, there was also the additional cost of printing the journal, and the hundreds of hours spent by the editorial board reading the applications and putting the journal together. I can personally vouch for the amount of time the editorial board spent working on the articles through my involvement with the editor Andy Zaky when he was considering my article for publication. After first submitting my essay he returned a paragraph by paragraph critique of my 20 page article and what needed to be added/deleted/changed if it was going to make it to print. Over the course of 2 weeks he read more than 6 drafts of my essay and made detailed comments on the progression the article was making.
"I received my copy of the journal in the mail yesterday, and I can assure you that it is not a mere e-journal of any type, but an actual paper journal that looks quite professional and that was actually printed. In addition, every person who submitted an article for consideration received a free copy of the journal. I know that for a fact because I have a friend who submitted an article, was denied, and received his copy of the journal yesterday also.
"This journal neither guarantees publication for the measly fee of $35 which would limit the prestige of the journal, nor does it rip-off applicants by pocketing the money received from failed applications. In my discussions with Mr. Zaky it seemed as if there were approximately 100 articles submitted, which would mean that the journal lost $2,800 on scholarships alone. I can't speak with regards to what they do at other journals about payment for submissions, but I know that there was no advertising in this past journal and so the only revenue for this journal came from application fees, and even with that money it seems as if there is no way this journal could have even come close to breaking even with its inaugural run.
"Based on my experience with this journal I feel as if the critique of it on your website is truly unfair and does a great disservice to the journal."
UPDATE: At least one lawyer is unimpressed with this defense.
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