Dear All, I realise that this thread is a discussion of how to document and support "fee-free" OA journals, but it might be useful to put in context the comment below that 70% of journals listed in the DOAJ (in 2009) were no-fee.
I say this because some might conclude on reading the comment that 70% of *papers* published in OA journals are being published without a fee. This is clearly not so. While some of the journals in DOAJ may currently be publishing no more than a handful of papers, others will be publishing many more. Indeed, for-fee "mega journals" will be publishing a great many more. Thus PLoS ONE (which charges an APC of $1,350) is now publishing around 2,000 papers a month, and expects to publish 3% of the STM literature this year (http://blogs.plos.org/everyone/2012/05/18/plos-one-a-personal-farewell/). Moreover, as subscription publishers increasingly embrace OA we can be sure that they will be doing so by charging an APC. As such, I assume that we have no idea at all of how many OA *papers* are being published on a no-fee basis. (Or perhaps someone does have some data here)? Either way, list members will doubtless feel that this makes it is all the more important to document and support fee-free journals. Best wishes, Richard Poynder -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan Gray Sent: 15 August 2012 15:37 To: [email protected] Subject: [Open-access] Fwd: Fee-free scholarly publishing Hi all, I'm forwarding a very interesting recent thread about fee-free scholarly publishing started by Peter Murray-Rust with Rosemary Laurent from INRIA [1], Richard Poynder, Peter Suber, Jenny Molloy, Tom Olijhoek, Ross Mounce and several other OKFN folks. Peter Murray-Rust's original email to Rosemary is at the bottom, as well as some of the subsequent correspondence with Rosemary Laurent, Richard Poynder and Peter Suber. Basically the discussion is about how we can better document and support 'fee-free' open access journals - which might include case studies, a possible 'fee-free' OA handbook, publicity and community building activities, and building a better 'best practises network' with people and organisations who have done it. We all agreed that - rather than continuing discussion in private - it would make more sense to open this discussion up to others on this list! All the best, Jonathan [1] http://www.inria.fr/en/institute/inria-in-brief On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 1:45 AM, Peter Suber <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I'd be glad to stay in the loop for this discussion. > > In May 2009, Stuart Shieber did a systematic survey of the journals in > the DOAJ, and found that 70% were no-fee. As far as I know, that's the > most recent systematic survey. > http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2009/05/29/what-percentage-of-op > en-access-journals-charge-publication-fees/ > > The DOAJ doesn't maintain a separate list of the no-fee journals. But > if you browse the journals by field, the journal record will tell you > whether or not the journal charges a publication fee. Here are the > journals in botany just to show some examples. Look at the first two > listed. The first charges a fee and second doesn't. > http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=subject&cpid=72&uiLanguage=en > > I've written about OA journals several times over the years, most > recently (not very recently!) in November 2006, when most people > didn't even realize they existed, let alone that they constituted the majority of OA journals. > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/11-02-06.htm#nofee > > I haven't seen a "handbook" of no-fee OA journal publishing. If you > compile one, it would be very useful. Meantime, see the list of OA > journal business models at the Open Access Directory. > http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/OA_journal_business_models > > This list has no entry for "no-fee" OA journals because "no-fee" isn't > a business model. Instead, look at the business models other than > "publication fees" and "submission fees". > > Best, > Peter S. > > Peter Suber > gplus.to/petersuber _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
