Miltiadis D. Lytras wrote:
>
> Concerning our scheme is very simple:)Not complex at all. It seems that
> you dont read us or you pay attention to the facts that others do. Like
> biomed that asks 100s of euros for a papers to be published 1300-2500
> euros.
> why don't you mention this and you mention that BIOMED CENTRAL IS GREAT?
Biomed Central is a commercial publisher in the sense that it needs
money to stay in business. Because medical research is relatively
well-funded it is possible for researchers to pay a fee for inclusion
which avoids the publisher having to sell subscriptions and limit
circulation to academics in big universities in rich countries. A number
of science funding organisations recognise the value of the Biomed
Central approach and have agreed to allow researchers to include these
dissemination costs in their research budget. Biomed Central has managed
to maintain the academic credibility of its journals despite the pay to
publish method because they have followed good editorial practice
In other disciplines other models may be used. In Design Lin-Lin Chen
has pioneered an open-access journal (International Journal of Design)
with no charges to authors or readers. However there is still a cost and
that is being met by her university and the Taiwanese government.
Producing a journal is difficult and expensive however you approach it.
I am very enthusiastic about open-access publishing which is why I paid
close attention to ORS. I am sorry that I cannot support it and I felt
it necessary to explain why. I mentioned the question of payment because
I find it worrying that an organisation that has no named officers is
asking people to pay membership subscriptions. It also says on the ORS
home page that "Our Non-Government Organisation runs 100 journals" That
is completely untrue. A true statement would be that "Our NGO hopes to
run 100 journals in the future, so far we have designed the front covers."
Sorry to be a grouch but it is exceptionally difficult to run one
journal effectively, to set up 100 new journals in very diverse fields
from nothing in a year is astonishing. At the very least I'd like to
know who is running this and where the resources come from.
best wishes
Chris
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