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Free access sounds great
– but surely somebody has to pay?
Open Access journals are free to the reader. Certainly,
there are costs associated with journal publishing (even
if only online). There are a variety of models for covering
the costs of open access journals, including
- Author submission/publication charges or article
processing fees
- Off-print sales
- Advertising
- Sponsorships
- Convenience-format licenses or distributor format
fee
- Journal publication in off-line media (print or
CD-ROM)
- Value-added fee-based services
- Foundation Grants
- Institutional Grants and Subsidies
- Government Grants
- Gifts and Fundraising Voluntary
(for full details see the OSI Guides
to Business Planning for Open Access Journals business
guides). Of these, one of the most stable and scalable
models may be the first, i.e., placing a publication
charge on all accepted papers, so rather than funding
access (through the reader) we fund dissemination (through
the author).
But authors cannot afford to pay publication
charges
Existing open access journals make publication charges
that vary in the region of $500 (for BioMedCentral)
to $1500 (for Public Library
of Science). Many authors are already finding these
types of sums for publication in subscription-based,
‘closed’ access journals – through
page charges, colour figure charges, reprint costs,
etc.
However, in the long term researchers should receive
publication funds from their research funding body of
host institution. Just as few researchers pay for materials,
computer time, lab space, research assistants, etc.
out of their own pocket there is no reason they should
pay for publication charges themselves. Some funding
bodies already make money available in their grants
for publication (see the BioMedCentral list).
Indeed a growing number of funding bodies prefer open
access publication as it ensures the widest dissemination
of the researcher that they have funded. Also, a number
of libraries are taking on the responsibility of managing
publication charges for authors at their institutions.
As the cost of subscriptions fall (as more material
is available through open access) this will become more
common.
What about authors in the developing world
– their institutions will not be able to afford
to pay?
Researchers in the developing world already suffer
from a double disadvantage – they cannot access
the world’s literature (as they cannot afford
subscriptions) and they cannot get their work published
in the leading journals (as a cursory scan of the majority
of ISI listed journals shows). A move to open access
would immediately solve the first problem – developing
world researchers would be able to read all of the world’s
research literature, not the tiny fraction they currently
have access to (provided they can access the internet).
Again, looking at those publishers who already offer
open access through publication charges gives an idea
of how the system could be ordered. The publishers waive
the charges for those authors who do not have the funds
to pay. There is no reason why this could not be extended
to the vast majority of open access journals. An additional
way in which developing country authors could benefit
from new models to communicate with their peers worldwide
is through the setting up of institutional repositories
(link). Authors would deposit their research finding
in the repositories (at the institutional or national
level) and their work would then be discoverable using
repository search engines. True, these papers would
not necessarily be peer reviewed, but at least they
would be presented to the international community.
So, through open access developing country researchers
would benefit significantly as readers and, through
repositories, as authors.
Publication charges were described earlier
as being of a similar size as page charges – but
surely page charges are being phased out as they don’t
work?
It is true that over the past few years a number of
journals (particularly society journals) have abolished
page charges. This has been because page charges were
believed to discourage authors from submitting their
papers to the journals. Page charges were originally
introduced to enable publishers to reduce increases
in subscription prices. Those publishers who used charges
in this way felt a responsibility not to place too much
pressure on library budgets. However, page charges offered
no benefits to authors – if they had a choice
they would rather submit to a journal with no page charges,
irrespective of the cost to the library.
In open access, however, the author receives a massive
benefit from paying the charge. Now, rather than their
paper being seen only by people at the few hundred institutions
world-wide lucky enough to have a subscription to the
journal, it can be seen by anybody with access to the
internet. It is now in the author’s interest to
pay the charge.
As publishers are receiving payment for each
accepted payment surely it will be in their interests
to increase the acceptance rate of their journals to
increase their income
Some publishers will almost certainly attempt this,
in the same way that some publish large quantities of
lightly reviewed proceedings and charge ever increasing
subscription prices. However, reputable publishers will
realise that increasing their acceptance rate to generate
revenue will only benefit them in the short term.
Journals will compete for authors. Authors will only
submit to a journal and pay the publication charge if
they feel that the journal meets their needs. Specifically,
authors will want to feel that their paper will benefit
from the prestige of the journal it is published in.
If a publisher accepts greater number of papers (papers
that previously would have been rejected) the prestige,
usage, impact factor, etc. will decrease. Therefore,
authors will no longer feel that it is in their interest
to publish in the journal. They will stop submitting
to the journal and publisher’s revenue will diminish.
It is in the best interest of high quality journals
to ensure that they remain high quality and they can
best do this by maintaining high rejection rates.
Are there additional objections that have been missed?
Please let us know:
David Prosser
E-mail: david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk
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