A quick note re Pam's point: most good open access publishers do not
charge article processing fees for researchers based in low-income
nations - so open access is still good for them! This is particularly
true in fields with a strong applied element (eg medicine and
engineering).
Best
Steve
Quoting Pamela Shurmer-Smith <[log in to unmask]>:
> We are looking at terrible contradictions regarding widening and
> narrowing the knowledge consumption and production gap here. A huge
> number of people find it difficult to access even the major
> journals, those who are not members of universities (those who have
> been deprived of higher education altogether, graduates not employed
> in academia, even retired long-serving academics like myself) but
> also members of universities in poorer countries and poorer
> universities in wealthy countries. One immediately welcomes the
> principle of open access. Then comes the sting - exactly the same
> people as would benefit as "consumers" are immediately excluded as
> producers, when one considers the huge numbers who will never see a
> research grant and who don't think £250 cheap. One can't produce
> publishable material without access, then can't afford to problish
> one's product with it!
>
> This matters to everyone, unless one agrees that only the views of
> the establishment count.
> Pamela Shurmer-Smith
> Currently National University of Singapore, but soon to be back in
> the wilderness.
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Steve Cummins <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Mon, 17 May, 2010 23:54:16
> Subject: Re: Article Processing Charges
>
> Open access publishing is now common in the sciences, in fact are a
> condition of funding for NIHR, MRC, ESRC etc and you can request
> funds to cover charges as part of any grant budget. Personally I
> support such things, but the charges are onerous for projects
> without research grants.
>
> £250 is fairly cheap - PLoS and BioMed Central for example charge c
> US$1000 per article depending on the journal. PLoS journals are very
> high impact now if that is your bag.
>
> You can of course deposit a word pre-publication version on your
> manuscript in UKPMC that will be open access for nothing if your
> article is life science related. For ESRC research you can deposit
> it in the ESRC Society Today archive. You can also deposit a pre-pub
> version on your home webpage or institutional repository.
>
> Of course I would ensure that the publisher is a not for profit, and
> not a paper mill. Some 'open access' publishers may have looser
> quality criteria in order to maximise income from page charges and
> there are possible scholarly implications as suggested by this story
> in Nature.
>
> "Editor will quit over hoax paper
> Computer-generated manuscript accepted for publication in
> open-access journal.
>
> http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090615/full/news.2009.571.html"
>
> Best
> Steve
>
> Halfacree K.H. wrote:
>> Hi everyone
>>
>>
>> A quick question. What do folks think of the following arrangement?
>>
>>
>> ?Open access publishing proposes a relatively new model for
>> scholarly journal publishing that provides immediate, worldwide,
>> barrier-free access to the full-text of all published articles.
>> Open access allows all interested readers to view, download, print,
>> and redistribute any article without a subscription, enabling far
>> greater distribution of an author's work than the traditional
>> subscription-based publishing model?. In an open access model, the
>> publication costs of an article are paid from an author's research
>> budget, or by their supporting institution, in the form of Article
>> Processing Charges (APC). APCs replace subscription charges and
>> allow publishers to make the full-text of every published article
>> freely available to all interested readers. In addition, authors
>> who publish in our open access journals retain the copyright of
>> their work??
>>
>> Personally, I?m unsure. APC of c.250 pounds and having a very very
>> limited ?research budget?, versus the great benefits of open access?
>>
>>
>> Cheers, and now back to marking?. Keith
>>
>
> -- 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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