Some journals like Nucleic Acids Research (NAR) start to change their policy. They start to provide "Open Access," but will charge the authors for publication fee. If the University have paid for annual membership, the publication fee will be much lower. For example, NAR charges $950 for authors from member inst., but $1900 for authors from non-member inst. Acutally, the University membership fee is only $2700 annually. Therefore, if the University did not pay the membership, the University community is very likely to pay much more for the publications than for the subscription. So, I propose the Library consider to pay for the membership. If needed, we can communicate with the University authority to find a optimal solution for the University as a whole.
(background: open access journals make their contents freely available online. Instead of charging subscription fees, most [PS: actually fewer than half] open access journals charge authors who submit manuscripts for publication. For more information, see the Open Access Overview.)
Currently, there is no official University policy regarding who pays the submission fees to a journal. Although the Library has purchased one open access "membership" (to BioMed Central), our position is that grant-funded research should have publishing costs written into the grant, or that University departments (possibly in conjunction with the Library) assume such costs as part of the "administrative overhead" of research. The question of open access funding is still in very early stages, and we hope to continue discussing financial support for University authors with other areas of the University. In the meantime, I note that Nucleic Acids Resarch offers a partial or full waiver of charges for authors who can't afford the submission charges.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/28/2006 07:53:00 AM.
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.
