On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Christopher D. Green wrote: > Page charges like those levied by PLoS and BMC will never be accepted in > psychology, which is now among the largest of all academic disciplines > (Amer. Psych. Assoc. -- ...the largest of several major > psych. societies -- has some 150,000 members/affiliates and publishes > nearly 50 journals). Stevan disagrees with me about this -- never say > "never," he says.
Never say never. In the meanwhile, if you can't find a suitable open-access journal to publish in (or don't want to have to pay any publishing charges), continue to publish in the journal of your choice -- and self-archive! http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt > institutional membership is, IMHO, the way to go. Otherwise, the vast > majority of authors (who don't really care about this issue one way or > another) will simply continue to send their work to traditional journals > that charge them nothing to publish and whose issues they can pick off > the library shelves (apparently) for free. Fine. But don't keep losing daily research impact while waiting for the day when all journals become open-access journals, funded by institutional charges: Make your articles openly accessible by self-archiving them right now. And if you want to know why you need to care about whether or not your work is open-access, see these: Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and easier. Ariadne 35. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Ariadne-RAE.htm Harnad, S. (2003) Maximising Research Impact Through Self-Archiving. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/che.htm Harnad, S. (2003) Self-Archive Unto Others as Ye Would Have Them Self-Archive Unto You. The Australian Higher Education Supplement. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/unto-others.html Harnad, S. (2003) Measuring and Maximising UK Research Impact. Times Higher Education Supplement. Friday, June 6 2003. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/thes.html Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at the American Scientist September Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03): http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html or http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Discussion can be posted to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org