[Coral-List] More on open access

Charles Delbeek delbeek at waquarium.org
Sun Apr 13 19:17:01 EDT 2008


Not to go into too great a discussion about this but I have to say I 
find the logic behind most of their arguments rather questionable to say 
the least.


Richard Dunne wrote:
> Coral Listers
>
>
> Herewith some informative passages from the PLos website:
>
> Why should I have to pay to publish my paper?
> It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article 
> that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is 
> accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding 
> agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be 
> undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" 
> a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by 
> the number of papers published. We ask that—as a small part of the cost 
> of doing the research—the author, institution, or funding agency pays a 
> fee, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the 
> publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the 
> form of page or color charges.) Many funding agencies now support this view.
>
> More than US$2000 is a lot to pay to publish an article, isn't it?
> Not when you consider the cost of the research that led to the article. 
> Publication fees of $2000 or $2500 are a small fraction of the costs of 
> doing research, and it makes sense for funding agencies to include these 
> fees in research grants. Many funding agencies now support this view. 
> They recognize that publishing is an integral part of the research 
> process - and if the work is published OA it will deliver the maximum 
> possible impact, which in turn maximizes the outcome of the funder's 
> investment in research.
>
> Ultimately, the fees that PLoS charge reflect the costs associated with 
> publishing. We are not in this to make a profit - our bottom line is to 
> make the literature a public resource. The administration of peer 
> review, copy editing, production of high-quality tagged electronic 
> files, web hosting, and so on are expensive processes. They are many of 
> the same processes that are used in traditional subscription journals. 
> If the money that currently supports subscription journals can be 
> re-routed to cover publication fees then we will be able to support open 
> access publishing in a fully sustainable way.
>   




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