A reader has asked me why I criticized the Royal Society today (and Springer and Elsevier previously) for high fees at their hybrid OA journals when I didn't criticize PLoS for its recent fee increases. The Royal Society charges $553 per page; Springer and Elsevier charge $3,000 per paper; and next month PLoS will charge $2,500 per paper at its two leading journals. It's a fair question and here's a brief answer.
PLoS Biology offers six kinds of value for the money that the Royal Society does not:
Freedom from additional fees. The RS levies color charges on top of the article processing fees.
Professionally written lay synopses of each article
A higher impact factor
A standing policy to let authors retain copyright
Assurance of long-term OA by depositing in PubMed Central (insurance in case the journal later changes its access policy)
Fee waivers in cases of economic hardship
In a different category of value, PLoS Biology offers OA to every article it publishes, making subscriptions unnecessary and freeing library funds for other purposes. For the same reason, it has a stronger interest in making its OA option attractive to authors. It can't make up for low author uptake with subscription revenue.
And of course, even after the fee hike, PLoS Biology charges less than the Royal Society (for a paper five pages or longer) and less than Springer and Elsevier (for any paper).
But having said this, I do worry that the PLoS Biology fee will deter authors --or that it would deter authors but for the PLoS waiver policy. BTW, PLoS Director of Publishing Mark Patterson shares this concern.
Finally, I only criticized the RS, Springer, and Elsevier fees for being so high as to generate a low level of author uptake. I didn't criticize them for unduly exceeding the costs of publication, since I don't know whether they do. If the PLoS fee reduces author uptake, then I'll criticize it too. If the RS, Springer, and Elsevier fees don't generate a low level of author uptake, then I'll gladly withdraw my criticism and stand corrected.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/21/2006 09:31:00 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.
