Thanks Steve (and previous contributors).
We at Surveillance & Society have so far decided to avoid going down the route of pay-to-publish, though I appreciate the more progressive rationale of the scheme Steve describes. We don't do commercial advertising either (as some online journals have done). Instead we set up a charity to run the journal, Surveillance Studies Network. The network makes its money through memberships, donations, conference profits from our extremely popular biannual event, and reprint fees from publishers (as per the terms of our Creative Commons licensing). Not only does this provide us with enough money to pay something towards our new and very part-time editorial assistant, it is also allowing us to subsidise students from the global south to attend important training events in surveillance studies, and have annual prizes for papers by early-career researchers (to be announced officially soon!). Membership of the Network also gives rights to members to stand for election to the Editorial board and affect the direction of the journal and the other activities of the Network.
However I recognise that this is not appropriate for every journal. Firstly, we are a particular active and committed bunch in surveillance studies and have put a lot of own time into this - far more than can ever be compensated for! The setting up of the charitable company (and its own site and members' forum etc) ha taken a lot of time in addition to the journal itself. Secondly, we have a specific area largely to ourselves - there is of course lots of writing on surveillance in many disciplines and in many journals and long may that continue, but we are the only specific surveillance studies journal and you probably couldn't have too many paying associations or networks in a field, even a big one like Geography...
BTW, like Lawrence from ACME, who helped us at the start, I am very happy to share my experience of all this with anyone considering going down the same route - whether setting up a journal or a charitable association or both...
David.
Dr David Murakami Wood
ESRC Research Fellow, Global Urban Research Unit | Visiting Scholar, Postgraduate Program in Urban Management
Newcastle University, UK | Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
e-mail: [log in to unmask] | website: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/guru/staff/profile/d.f.j.wood | blog: http://ubisurv.wordpress.com
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From: A forum for critical and radical geographers [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Steve Cummins [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 10 April 2009 15:15
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Open versus closed access journals
All,
Just some further info..
1) Social science journals tend to lag behind trends in open access
publishing compared to the medical/health/lifescience fields. As you are
probably aware PLoS (Public Library of Science) and BMC (BioMed Central)
are very well established open access publishers whose flagship journals
compete with the very top journals (eg BMJ, Lancet, Nature Medicine,
JAMA etc). Many PLoS/BMC journals are also indexed in Thomson ISI,
SCOPUS etc
2) These organisations do not have publishing charges, or reduce them,
for those that can make a case not to pay (ie some grad students,
researchers from low-income countries) The implied idea is that
researchers in resource rich nations can help indirectly subsidise
researchers in resource poor settings. Personally, I don't mind paying
page/publication charges if this principle is maintained.
3) Public research funders (eg MRC, BBSRC, BHF, CRUK, Wellcome Trust)
are increasingly insisting that outputs deriving from public grants
should be open access either in online repositories (eg UKPubMed
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/) or in free to access journals. Funders themselves
are also starting to run open access peer-reviewed journals that have no
publishing charges (eg NIH publication Preventing Chronic Disease).
Steve
--
Steven Cummins MSc PhD
Senior Lecturer & NIHR Fellow
Department of Geography
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road
London E1 4NS
T: 44 020 7882 7653 (direct)
F: 44 020 7882 7479
E: [log in to unmask]
W: Healthy Environments Research Programme
http://webspace.qmul.ac.uk/healthyenvironments/index.html
http://www.geog.qmul.ac.uk/staff/cumminss.html
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