The Public Library of Science has summarized its experience as an OA publisher in a white paper, Publishing Open-Access Journals, February 2004. Excerpt: "There are many different paths to producing a journal, either online or in print, with a tremendously wide spectrum of costs that can be generated or avoided during the publishing
process. The aggregate cost of shepherding manuscripts through peer review, preparing selected papers for publishing, and finally disseminating articles depends on the particular steps that a
publisher deems necessary for a particular journal. Using unpaid academic editors and an opensource online journal management system, eschewing frills in the production process, and publishing online directly in archives with minimal formatting requirements (for example, those that accept articles as simple PDF files), a publisher could potentially produce a peer-reviewed journal spending little or no money....This is the preliminary version of a document that we anticipate will evolve over time. In its present state, this paper concerns predominantly production rather than editorial systems, structures, and costs. However, as PLoS grows as a publisher and launches new journals with different editorial and production systems, and as more open access publishers share their editorial and production costs, we will plan to update this document with additional information as it becomes available."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/25/2004 10:16:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
