The Research Information Network and Universities UK have set up a working group to look at the arrangements of paying open access publication fees: that is, fees levied by some journals for the publication of scholarly articles so that they can be made available free of charge to readers, immediately upon publication. The group aims to produce guidance for universities and other research institutions, publishers, research funders, and authors....
[O]pen access journals have become a growing part of the scholarly publishing landscape over the past few years. But ways of paying publication fees have grown up haphazardly and are not standardised: fees are sometimes met from unallocated funds available to researchers from research grants or other sources, but sometimes have been met from researchers’ own pockets.
The group includes representatives from the library, publishing and research administrator communities, and they will be looking at the issues to be addressed in establishing coordinated and strategic approaches to the payment of publication fees and aim to provide practical guidance on the implementation of such an approach. The guidance will be published later this autumn.
Also see the RIN December 2006 Briefing note on the payment of publication fees (and my blog post on it), describing two methods by which UK universities could be reimbursed by the RCUK when they pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/23/2008 10:20:00 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.
