Dear Malcolm, Actually, I think neither of the three versions you suggested are ideal. The ideal solution would be to have journals that do NOT charge page charges and are open-source at the same time. Of course, this is idealism. If we stick to the three options you suggested, I think we should analize them based on their effect on readers/contributors with less funding (third world/poor country researchers/students). I'm from Hungary, so I now what it is when you just can't get the article you need anywhere in your country.
> 1) Journal is open access, the publisher will charge page charges to = > authors. This is good for all readers, including researchers and students in poor countries. However, it's not good for contributors from these conditions. Consequently, research published in these journals will come from researchers from the US and Western Europe with good funding. This would we a good quality journal to read, but would be unreachable to publish in for researchers in poor countries. > 2) No page charges (except color plates), but the publisher charges = > download fees and only the abstracts are open access. =20 This is a good journal to publish for researchers from poor countries. However, only researchers in the US and Western Europe at main universities could afford to read it ! In this case, the strange effect could develop that one cannot afford to read his/her own article. Also, researchers in poor countries would may be reluctant to publish (even for free) in a journal they cannot read. > 3) Page charges are optional for the author, if the author pays the = > entire article is open access, if not then only the abstract will be = > accessible without paying a download fee. =20 This is obviously a mixed model. This says that if an author has a lot of funding, he can do a favor to poor researchers by making his/her paper open access. But why would someone spend research funding for such a favor ? If the author wants to do this favor, he/she can do it free by sending his/her paper in email to researchers who contact him/her, or (although illegally) he/she can post the paper on a lab website. Also, I fail to understand why the funding agencies would allow such favor as a legitimate funding of research money. The only justification I can think of is to further the spread of the knowledge in the paper, but that is unneccessary if the paper is already highly relevant. So I don't really think this is a good model. But maybe I'm too skeptical. Or maybe some other incentive could be devised for the rich researcher to pay page charges in addition to being nice to poor colleagues. For short, I think a good combination of type 1 and type 2 journals do the job of allowing researchers/students in poor countries both to read journals and publish in journals - although not in the same ones. Of course, citation indexes of type 1 papers will be much higher than of type 2 papers, which will create an unfair situation for researhers in poor countries competing with researchers in the US and Western Europe - but this is nothing new. Anyway, this is my 2 cents. Krisztian Magori postdoctoral researcher Gould Lab, Method Rd, Unit #1 Department of Entomology NCSU, Raleigh, NC > In case someone is unaware, If an article is entirely open access then = > anyone can read it or download it online. IF only the abstract is = > available then you can read the abstract online, but must pay a fee to = > download the entire article. > =20 > Thanks for the feedback, its actually very important! > =20 > Malcolm L. McCallum > Assistant Professor > Department of Biological Sciences > Texas A&M University Texarkana > 2600 Robison Rd. > Texarkana, TX 75501 > O: 1-903-233-3134 > H: 1-903-791-3843 > Homepage: https://www.eagle.tamut.edu/faculty/mmccallum/index.html > =20 > _________________________________________________________________________________ Karácsonyi és Akciós csengõhangok a megújult Sztarsms oldalon - http://www.sztarsms.hu
