1 Can a Doctor Pursue a Full-Time Career as a Writer?

In many developed nations, medical writing and editing is a well-established career path for doctors who are interested in publication. It is not possible, at present, to make a living doing this in India. However, with the increasing number of publications (in print and on the electronic media), medical books, promotions of drugs and devices, and writing designs for drug trials the requirement for medical writers is increasing [1].

Authors generally do not get paid for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In fact, you may be expected to pay the publisher if it is an open access journal, i.e., it is freely available to readers on the net. The amount may vary from journal to journal and could be from one thousand rupees to ten thousand rupees. Journal publishers justify charging this reasoning that it makes their publications cheaper by helping to offset some of their costs of reviewing, editing, and printing and, moreover, some agencies, like the National Institutes of Health in the USA, insist that the publication of their funded research is in open access journals.

However, if you publish a book you may get some money from writing it in the form of a ‘royalty’. Debut writers can expect to receive 5–7.5% of its selling price but if you are recognized as an authority on the subject or already a renowned name in the field this percentage can reach 15% [2]. The percentage rises depending on who the publisher is and how successful the author’s previous books have been. Earlier, there was no tax on royalty—it was exempted under the sales tax. However, now a Goods and Services Tax (GST) of 12% is applicable on author royalties. In another model, the publishers pay a lump sum as a fee for writing a book.

figure a

2 Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get Their Work Published?

Many writers are turning towards open access journals for publication of their work. These journals provide full text articles which can be read and downloaded by anyone but the author needs to pay a fairly substantial amount for the privilege [3]. The advantage of open access publication is its easy visibility and early appearance of your work. There are about 540 Open Access journals in India. They include some from various government bodies like the Indian Council of Medical Research, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources, Defence Scientific Information and Documentation Centre and Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

3 Do Any Countries Give Researchers Cash Incentives for Publication in Peer-Reviewed Journals?

Yes, China is the most well known for this practice. Figure 35.1 shows the amount paid in dollars to the first author by the Chinese authorities for publication in various journals. The amount can range from ten to nearly fifty thousand dollars. The highest amount is given for publication in the journals ‘Science’, ‘Nature’, or the ‘Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology’. For publications in the last journal, the author gets a cash incentive equal to the annual salary of a newly hired Professor and if the article is published in ‘Nature’ or ‘Science’, whose journal Impact Factors are 43 and 41, respectively, which means each article has been cited in subsequent publications 43 and 41 times in the next two years (the Impact Factor of an Indian journal, the Indian Journal of Medical Research is 2.0) the cash incentive is up to 20 times the annual salary of a university professor [4, 5]. China has more than a thousand universities which are classified into a 3-tier system. In 1990, they started a project 211 to strengthen about one hundred educational institutions which were classified as tier 1. According to this, the tier 1 universities were given 70% of the national funding so that they could publish research papers.

Fig. 35.1
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Cash paid in dollars by the Chinese authorities from 2008 to 2016 for publication in various science journals [4]

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Other countries are now adopting this practice of giving cash as incentives and these include two in the Gulf region, i.e., Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well in southeast Asia—Malaysia and Taiwan.

In India, the GMR Institute of Technology in Andhra Pradesh has also started paying authors (details available at www.gmr.it.org facilities, perks (Fig. 35.2) [6]. However, a cash incentive for publications has not been perceived to be a good idea by the Western scientific world who felt it hurts both an individual and scientific society [7]. Whether or not it would be good for India is a moot point but we suggest, given the current abysmal state of Indian medical research and publication, that it might be well worth trying.

Fig. 35.2
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Cash bonus for publication global data [5]

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4 Does Collaborative Research Get More Funding for the Researcher?

Yes, collaborative research work has two objectives; firstly, to improve the quality of research by getting help from more experienced colleagues and secondly to attract more funds from wealthier countries. The top five countries with whom Indian doctors collaborated in publication between 1999 and 2008 were the USA (46.85%), the UK (21.61%), Australia (7.48%), Canada (6.39%), and Japan (6.05%). China appeared in the 11th position (2.8%). Over the next 10 years, a publication by Chaman et al. (2009–2018) mentioned that the USA remained the number one partner in collaboration (31.18%) but, surprisingly, China jumped to the second position during this decade (14.35%) [8, 9].

5 How Do Publishers Earn?

Medical publishing is generally a financial venture and many organizations like Elsevier, the Oxford University Press, Wolters Kluwer, and Springer Nature are the leaders in this field. Once a contract is signed by the organization or institute that wishes to start or continue an existing journal and the publisher a fairly substantial sum of money is exchanged. Over and above this, the publisher charges the association according to the number of copies printed. The publishers also gain from the journal’s advertisements, subscriptions (personal or institutional), Internet downloads, and from reprints. A proportion of this money is returned to the institution according to the contract. It is estimated that science publishing had made US$9.4 billion profit from ‘about 1.8 million English language papers each yielding a revenue of about $5000 to the publisher’ [1]. With an annual return on investment of about 40% journal publishing is perhaps more lucrative for investors than the pharmaceutical sector. [9, 10]

6 Conclusions

  • Publication should be considered as an academic activity rather than an activity to earn money.

  • The article processing charge (APC), is a fee that authors need to pay to open access journals for publication.

  • Some countries offer money for publication. China is the number one country on this list.

  • Publishers earn substantial amounts of money from subscriptions to the journal, downloading of articles, or publication of books.