As part of my coverage of the evolution of the debate over open access (the story should run on Wired News this week), I emailed some questions to Public Library of Science, one of the leading open-access publishers.
Mark Patterson, director of publishing, responded.
First, I asked what PloS thinks about the publicity campaign that's been launched by traditional publishers who want to prevent mandatory open access:
The action by the AAP [Association of American Publishers] is an indication of how strong the open access movement has become. There has been huge progress towards open access over the past year in particular, and comprehensive open access is now inevitable.
PLoS will continue to build an outstanding open access publishing operation, and promote public access to all research publications…
The PLoS journals themselves are open access, peer-reviewed, and publish great science. The quality of these journals speaks for itself.
What about the financial status of PloS? (Some open-access journals are having trouble making a profit.)
PLoS is supported by a mixture of philanthropy and revenue from our publishing operation, and we are on a path towards financial self-sufficiency.
I also asked about the PloS system, which generally requires authors [PS: or author-sponsors] to pay to be published.
As for author payment, our current prices are listed [here].
We offer a complete or partial fee waiver for authors who do not have funds to cover publication fees. Editors and reviewers have no access to author payment information, and so the inability to pay the fee will not influence the publishing decision about a paper.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/12/2007 08:26:00 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.
