Submission fees as a potential means of covering peer review costs have been mooted since at least 1999 and much discussed across the years in the American Scientist Open Access Forum. They are indeed a promising and potentially viable mechanism for covering the costs of peer review.
However, today, when 90% of journals (and almost 100% of the top journals) are still subscription-based, publication charges of any kind are still a deterrent. There is a case to be made, however, that submission charges -- for peer review -- applied to all submissions, regardless of whether they are ultimately accepted or rejected, are a more understandable and justifiable expense than publication charges, applied only to accepted articles (and bearing the additional burden of the cost of the peer review for all the rejected articles too).
It remains true, however, that at a time when most peer-reviewed journals are still subscription-based -- and when Green OA self-archiving is available as the authors' means to make all their published articles OA -- it is an unnecessary additional constraint and burden for authors (or their institutions or funders) to have to pay in any way for OA. ...
It makes incomparably more sense to focus all OA efforts on Green OA self-archiving and Green OA self-archiving mandates at this time. ...
Today, in contrast, such charges (whether for submission or acceptance) are not only a gratuitous additional burden for authors, their institutions and their funders, but they are a distraction from the immediate need for universal Green OA self-archiving and Green OA self-archiving mandates from all research institutions and funders.
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/21/2008 07:02:00 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.
