Scientific literature: Who should pay - author or subscriber?DCL News, January 2005. An unsigned editorial. Excerpt: 'One of the biggest threats to the established order is the Public Library of Science (PLoS), which publishes two journals - Biology and Medicine - and exists on donations from charitable foundations. Its executive director, Vivian Siegel, says her organization's mission is nothing less than to democratize science. "We think of ourselves as a combination of scientific publisher and an advocacy group to create a change that is larger than ourselves."...As it stands, there is no proof that the author pays model is sustainable. In five years of operation BioMed Central, for example, is yet to break even. What's more, there is no consensus on how much scientists should pay to publish their work. PLoS charges around $1500 per article; BioMed Central half that sum.' (PS: Two quick replies: PLoS launched with the help of foundation money but its business model is to operate on article processing fees and institutional memberships. There needn't be a consensus on how high to see processing fees; different journals in different fields will have different expenses.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/04/2005 07:56:00 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.
