Colleagues,
I appreciate the thoughtful (open...) exchange of ideas on this topic.
One thing I haven't seen fleshed out so much is what the cost of publishing
a research article should be and who should pay for it. It seems to me
there is a cost associated with it and although it is easy to say a charge
to an author seems "expensive" I would be interested in knowing what the
cost is.
I anticipate the answer should be related to what we expect of published
articles. Some very high quality journals have statistical and illustration
editors and editors who are paid. In addition to infrastructure for
manuscript management and editing, and peer review there are production
steps and
indexing and archiving all of which require a fair amount of human
skilled capital. Maintaining and operating a server indefinitely with useful
search functions etc is not a small or inexpensive endeavor. If we add up
those costs, they should be related to any fees charged for publication. I
don't know if that exercise would lead to a conclusion that the charges we
are seeing are high or low or about right.
My conclusion is that good quality journal publishing costs money and
someone has to pay for it if we want it. So then the question turns to who
should pay? If the research is funded (public or private) perhaps those
funds should include the cost of disseminating the results. If not funded,
then someone still has to pay. It can be the author, or the reader. There
don't seem to be too many other options (other options are fancier versions
of author or reader--like
institutions or governments or groups of
authors/readers). In any case, it doesn't strike me that OA vs traditional
subscription is clearly right or wrong. They are two different ways of
paying for something that costs money. We should probably move the debate
to the benefits and harms of both based on evidence...
Best
Rich
-----Original Message-----
From: Evidence based health (EBH)
[mailto:
[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ginny Barbour
Sent: Sunday, March 25, 2012 4:24 AM
To:
[log in to unmask]Subject: Re: Perils of open access
Dear All - I'd like to add my voice to Neil's and encourage anyone
interested in
this topic to join the webinar next Wednesday (register at
[log in to unmask]).
There is a lot of misunderstanding about what open access is which I hope we
can discuss. More importantly, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding
about what the potential benefits of OA are (ie, not just free access but
also reuse) - and how such a model really offers opportunities not possible
in subscription based models of publishing. But it is especially critical
that we do ensure that better dissemination does not mean that there is less
participation from authors without access to funds to pay for publishing -
ie that barriers to access do not turn into barriers to publish. PLoS and
other OA publishers are very keen to ensure this is not the case (and as
Trish Groves noted earlier many have waiver policies in place for example)
but we need to
hear from all sides of the debate as we plan how best OA
publishing can serve the needs of the entire community.
Best wishes
Ginny Barbour
Dr Virginia Barbour
Chief Editor, PLoS Medicine
Medicine Editorial Director, PLoS
Secretary, Committee on Publication Ethics
e:
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