Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
The charge can be broken down into a submission fee (for all articles) and a publication fee (for those articles published.) The submission fee covers the cost of peer review; the publication fee covers the cost of copy-editing and distribution. Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor, Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island University, Brookville, NY dgood...@liu.edu -Original Message- From: Alexander Grimwade [mailto:agrimw...@the-scientist.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 5:34 PM To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing Journals with 90% rejection rates, like Nature, Science and Cell have considerably higher editorial costs (per published paper) than those with rejection rates of 40%-60%, which is an average value for middle-of-the-road biomedical journals. Nearly the same effort goes into peer reviewing a rejected paper as an accepted paper. As PLoS charges only those authors whose papers are published, and as they aspire to Nature-like selectivity, their editorial costs will be higher than average open-access journals. You might even call their $1,500 a bargain. Alexander M. Grimwade Ph. D. Publisher THE SCIENTIST 3535 Market Street, Suite 200 Philadelphia PA 19104-3385 Phone: (215) 386 9601 x3020 Fax:(215) 387 7542 Email: agrimw...@the-scientist.com Web Site: http://www.the-scientist.com
Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
The differing fees ($500 versus $1500) have to do with rejection rates, since only accepted papers pay the fee. Rejected papers incur costs. The figure of about $500 per paper being adequate to cover costs depends on a rejection rate of about 50%. A rejection rate of about 80% would require a fee of about $1500. An alternative approach would be to charge the fee to all submissions. It need only be about $250 then, but those whose papers are rejected get nothing for their $250. This method would encourage authors to be very realistic in their choice of journal to submit to, though. As far as I know no journal has tried this approach yet. Fytton Rowland, Loughboroughb University, UK. - Original Message - From: Thomas Krichel kric...@openlib.org To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 8:45 PM Subject: Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing Stevan Harnad writes On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Thomas Krichel wrote: $1500 per paper should be amply sufficient to fund the publishing operation. I suggest that libraries support other ventures with more moderate charges. Thomas, did you mean $500 ? Otherwise your posting does not quite make sense. (PLoS is proposing $1500.) Yes, that is what I meant: $1500 should be amply sufficient. Institutions should not be handing more money to PLoS. If you meant $500 I remind you that PLoS is aiming explicitly for the high (quality, impact, prestige) end of science publishing (the level of Nature and Science) on the assumption that if the high end can be won over to OA journals, the rest will follow suit. By the same token, do you sincerely want to suggest that the competitors of PLoS who charge more reasonable fees are intending to attract low-quality papers? Surely not! They just not as greedy as PLoS. It costs as much to publish quality intellectual contents as it cost to publish rubbish intellectual contents. Sure, if you have complicate multi-media contents, then your costs are likely to be higher. But most of the documents we are talking here about are, presumably, the traditional stuff of text, mathematical formulas and pictures that academic authors are trained to produce. To produce good multi-media is a different story, it is likely to be the preserve of trade authors. $1500 may well cover extra enhancements that make the transition at the high end more appealing to authors at this time. PLoS can use the 9 Million subsidy that they already have received for that transition. Institutional monies will better spent on institutional archiving, or participation in discipline based initiatives such as arXiv.org, RePEc, or rclis.org. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
There is another payoff to the practice of charging for all submissions, that authors will less likely to breakdown their articles into multiple smaller publications to add lines to their resume. However, I would suggest a lower submission fee and a larger publication fee once the article has been accepted for publication. Several years ago, I wrote an article for the SPARC newsletter suggesting that we also build an organization to serve as an agent for research universities and publishers. Under this model, the fees for submission and publication would be pooled with this agency, and the agency would then bargain with publishers for X number of articles to be edited and published per year as an agreed upon price. The fees would be paid up-front so the publisher would have a secure financial base. Each year, the cost and number of articles could be renegotiated based on the quality of articles published and other quality and quantity factors to be established. This system would give more power to authors and their institutions whereas the current model still leaves the publishers in a very strong power position over the author. But it also offers the publisher a guaranteed revenue stream. --On Thursday, January 15, 2004 10:04 AM + Fytton Rowland j.f.rowl...@lboro.ac.uk wrote: The differing fees ($500 versus $1500) have to do with rejection rates, since only accepted papers pay the fee. Rejected papers incur costs. The figure of about $500 per paper being adequate to cover costs depends on a rejection rate of about 50%. A rejection rate of about 80% would require a fee of about $1500. An alternative approach would be to charge the fee to all submissions. It need only be about $250 then, but those whose papers are rejected get nothing for their $250. This method would encourage authors to be very realistic in their choice of journal to submit to, though. As far as I know no journal has tried this approach yet. Fytton Rowland, Loughboroughb University, UK.
New channel of support for open-access publishing
For immediate release January 14, 2004 For more information, contact: Helen Doyle, Public Library of Science, +1 415.624.1217, hdo...@plos.org or see http://www.plos.org/support. NEW CHANNEL OF SUPPORT FOR OPEN-ACCESS PUBLISHING Public Library of Science Announces Launch of Institutional Memberships January 14, 2004 San Francisco, CA. The movement for free online access to scientific and medical literature was bolstered earlier this month when the Public Library of Science [PLoS], a non-profit advocacy organization and open-access publisher, began offering Institutional Memberships. The announcement followed the October launch of PLoS Biology, the organization's flagship scientific journal, which is available on the Internet at no charge. Open-access publishers such as PLoS rely on revenue streams other than subscription and site-license fees to recover their costs. In lieu of asking readers to pay for access to PLoS Biology, PLoS requests a $1500 charge for publication in the journal, which is often paid from an author's research grant -- but which can now be largely offset by funds from other sources within the author's institution. Institutional memberships, says Dr. Helen Doyle, PLoS Director of Development and Strategic Alliances, are one way to provide an incentive for scientists in less well-funded disciplines, as well as those in developing countries, to publish in open-access journals. The memberships, which are available to universities, libraries, funders of research, and other organizations, offer sizable discounts on publication fees for affiliated authors--meaning that a scholarly institution, private foundation, or corporation could substantially reduce any financial barrier to publishing in PLoS Biology that its researchers faced. Skeptics of the long-term viability of open-access publishing have argued that publication charges may be more palatable for scientists in the relatively well-funded disciplines of biomedical research than for those in fields like ecology, where grants tend to be substantially smaller. We already waive all fees for any authors who say they can't afford them, Doyle adds, but we hope that Institutional Memberships will help assuage the concern that open access journals are unsustainable in fields with less funding. In biomedicine, publication charges are estimated to account for approximately one to two percent of the cost of research. Another open-access publisher, the United Kingdom-based BioMed Central, already offers an Institutional Membership program, and to date has an active roster of more than 300 institutions in 32 countries.
Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Thomas Krichel wrote: $1500 per paper should be amply sufficient to fund the publishing operation. I suggest that libraries support other ventures with more moderate charges. Thomas, did you mean $500 ? Otherwise your posting does not quite make sense. (PLoS is proposing $1500.) If you meant $500 I remind you that PLoS is aiming explicitly for the high (quality, impact, prestige) end of science publishing (the level of Nature and Science) on the assumption that if the high end can be won over to OA journals, the rest will follow suit. $1500 may well cover extra enhancements that make the transition at the high end more appealing to authors at this time. If and when there is a wholesale transition from TA to OA, there can also be some downsizing to just the essentials, in order to minimise unnecessary costs. Separating Quality-Control Service-Providing from Document-Providing http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0466.html Distinguishing the Essentials from the Optional Add-Ons http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1437.html The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0303.html The True Cost of the Essentials http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1973.html Re: The True Cost of the Essentials (Implementing Peer Review - NOT!) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1966.html Journal expenses and publication costs http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2589 Re: Scientific publishing is not just about administering peer-review http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3069.html Author Publication Charge Debate http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1387.html Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum: To join the Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Hypermail Archive: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 (gold): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 (green): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
Stevan Harnad writes On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Thomas Krichel wrote: $1500 per paper should be amply sufficient to fund the publishing operation. I suggest that libraries support other ventures with more moderate charges. Thomas, did you mean $500 ? Otherwise your posting does not quite make sense. (PLoS is proposing $1500.) Yes, that is what I meant: $1500 should be amply sufficient. Institutions should not be handing more money to PLoS. If you meant $500 I remind you that PLoS is aiming explicitly for the high (quality, impact, prestige) end of science publishing (the level of Nature and Science) on the assumption that if the high end can be won over to OA journals, the rest will follow suit. By the same token, do you sincerely want to suggest that the competitors of PLoS who charge more reasonable fees are intending to attract low-quality papers? Surely not! They just not as greedy as PLoS. It costs as much to publish quality intellectual contents as it cost to publish rubbish intellectual contents. Sure, if you have complicate multi-media contents, then your costs are likely to be higher. But most of the documents we are talking here about are, presumably, the traditional stuff of text, mathematical formulas and pictures that academic authors are trained to produce. To produce good multi-media is a different story, it is likely to be the preserve of trade authors. $1500 may well cover extra enhancements that make the transition at the high end more appealing to authors at this time. PLoS can use the 9 Million subsidy that they already have received for that transition. Institutional monies will better spent on institutional archiving, or participation in discipline based initiatives such as arXiv.org, RePEc, or rclis.org. Cheers, Thomas Krichel mailto:kric...@openlib.org http://openlib.org/home/krichel RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing
Journals with 90% rejection rates, like Nature, Science and Cell have considerably higher editorial costs (per published paper) than those with rejection rates of 40%-60%, which is an average value for middle-of-the-road biomedical journals. Nearly the same effort goes into peer reviewing a rejected paper as an accepted paper. As PLoS charges only those authors whose papers are published, and as they aspire to Nature-like selectivity, their editorial costs will be higher than average open-access journals. You might even call their $1,500 a bargain. Alexander M. Grimwade Ph. D. Publisher THE SCIENTIST 3535 Market Street, Suite 200 Philadelphia PA 19104-3385 Phone: (215) 386 9601 x3020 Fax:(215) 387 7542 Email: agrimw...@the-scientist.com Web Site: http://www.the-scientist.com
