Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Heather Morrison]

Thanks Richard and Falk.

This model is a good mixture of diverse support for different forms of open 
access.

The data showimg more articles in APC journals is from 2013 - 2015 and refers 
to the science fund. Are articles from the humanities and social sciences 
included? What about books, which are more common in HSS?

The FWF information page for sciences does not tell researchers which journals 
to publish in, but it does refer exclusively to the APC model and points to APC 
based publishers with whom FWF has arrangements. It seems reasonable to assume 
that this approach will have an impact on whether funded researchers choose APC 
journals, as well as whether they are aware that APC is not the only model for 
OA publishing.

What if FWF were to highlight their support for arXiv and DOAJ and provide 
information and encouragement for non-APC approaches on their page for 
recipients of science funding?  What if the support program for non-APC 
journals were expanded to include sciences? To find the funding for this 
expansion, consider cancelling subscription big deals and redirecting funds.

best,

Heather Morrison


 Original message 
From: "Reckling, Falk" 
Date: 2018-04-27 2:48 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Heather,

an we run programme support OA journals without APCs in Social Sciences and 
Humanities,
Best Falk

Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] Im Auftrag von 
Richard Poynder
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. April 2018 08:34
An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
Betreff: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Heather,

I am not sure I follow your logic. As I read it, FWF-funded researchers publish 
in non-APC journals too, but fewer of them. I don't think you are suggesting 
that researchers are told by FWF which publishers they are supposed to publish 
with?

What I take from the FWF figures is that most of the OA journals that 
researchers want to publish in charge an APC.

By the way, FWF also supports models that do not charge an APC: 
https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/forschungsfoerderung/open-access-policy/open-access-publikationsmodelle/

Richard


On 26 April 2018 at 22:56, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
Thanks Richard.

I see that the FWF makes funding available for open access article processing 
charges and targets particular publishers that use the APC method. Details 
here: 
https://m.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-programmes/peer-reviewed-publications/

This is a tautological argument: FWF pays APCs because they fund APCs. I would 
expect the same in the UK. The RCUK has provided block funding to pay for APCs. 
It seems reasonable to hypothesize that this approach results in APC payments 
and a tendency to find that UK funded research will be found in APC journals.

Scielo is a journal subsidy model. When countries subsidize journals for OA, 
the tendency is to not charge APCs.

In other words, what model(s) to support is a policy decision with real-world 
impacts.

best,

Heather Morrison


 Original message 
From: Richard Poynder 
>
Date: 2018-04-26 5:28 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Marc,

Thanks for providing these figures. Maybe we could consider them alongside some 
figures produced by the  Austrian Science Fund (FWF) here:

http://beta.briefideas.org/ideas/f2e9ebaa34cd5655203c7de332618061.

I quote:

Problem: There is an ongoing debate on the share of OAJ and OAA charging APC 
from authors. It has been shown that 67% of OAJ listed in the Directory of Open 
Access Journals (DOAJ) work without APC and costs get subsidised by other 
resources. But it is still unclear what the actual share of OAA in OAJ with and 
without APC is


Data: We analysed this question for OAA published via FWF funded projects from 
1/2013 to 8/2015. The sample includes 730 pure OAA published in 224 OAJ (Hybrid 
OAA are excluded).

Results: 83.0% (186) of the OAJ charge APC, while 17.0% (38) of the OAJ don’t. 
On the article level, 93.6% (683) of the articles were published with and 6.4% 
(47) without APC. This is driven by the fact that 84.9% (620) of all articles 
are published in journals from just 15 publishers charging APC by default.

Richard






On 26 April 2018 at 17:32, Marc Couture 
> wrote:
Peter Murray-Rust wrote :

>
I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the 
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Reckling, Falk]

Hi Heather,

an we run programme support OA journals without APCs in Social Sciences and 
Humanities,
Best Falk

Von: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] Im Auftrag von 
Richard Poynder
Gesendet: Freitag, 27. April 2018 08:34
An: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
Betreff: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Heather,

I am not sure I follow your logic. As I read it, FWF-funded researchers publish 
in non-APC journals too, but fewer of them. I don't think you are suggesting 
that researchers are told by FWF which publishers they are supposed to publish 
with?

What I take from the FWF figures is that most of the OA journals that 
researchers want to publish in charge an APC.

By the way, FWF also supports models that do not charge an APC: 
https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/forschungsfoerderung/open-access-policy/open-access-publikationsmodelle/

Richard


On 26 April 2018 at 22:56, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
Thanks Richard.

I see that the FWF makes funding available for open access article processing 
charges and targets particular publishers that use the APC method. Details 
here: 
https://m.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-programmes/peer-reviewed-publications/

This is a tautological argument: FWF pays APCs because they fund APCs. I would 
expect the same in the UK. The RCUK has provided block funding to pay for APCs. 
It seems reasonable to hypothesize that this approach results in APC payments 
and a tendency to find that UK funded research will be found in APC journals.

Scielo is a journal subsidy model. When countries subsidize journals for OA, 
the tendency is to not charge APCs.

In other words, what model(s) to support is a policy decision with real-world 
impacts.

best,

Heather Morrison


 Original message 
From: Richard Poynder 
>
Date: 2018-04-26 5:28 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Marc,

Thanks for providing these figures. Maybe we could consider them alongside some 
figures produced by the  Austrian Science Fund (FWF) here:

http://beta.briefideas.org/ideas/f2e9ebaa34cd5655203c7de332618061.

I quote:

Problem: There is an ongoing debate on the share of OAJ and OAA charging APC 
from authors. It has been shown that 67% of OAJ listed in the Directory of Open 
Access Journals (DOAJ) work without APC and costs get subsidised by other 
resources. But it is still unclear what the actual share of OAA in OAJ with and 
without APC is


Data: We analysed this question for OAA published via FWF funded projects from 
1/2013 to 8/2015. The sample includes 730 pure OAA published in 224 OAJ (Hybrid 
OAA are excluded).

Results: 83.0% (186) of the OAJ charge APC, while 17.0% (38) of the OAJ don’t. 
On the article level, 93.6% (683) of the articles were published with and 6.4% 
(47) without APC. This is driven by the fact that 84.9% (620) of all articles 
are published in journals from just 15 publishers charging APC by default.

Richard






On 26 April 2018 at 17:32, Marc Couture 
> wrote:
Peter Murray-Rust wrote :

>
I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the 
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve 
this.
>
To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the works of 
Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals. Yes, I know 
it’s not peer-reviewed research, but don’t let me start on this (besides, I 
have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals, and Walt’s work 
certainly meets the usual scientific standards).
Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access Journals 
2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html)
In 2016 :
1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles that 
year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing 43% of 
the articles, had no APCs.
2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published 280k 
articles (54% of total).
Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had no APCs.
3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total) published 240k 
articles (46% of total).
Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had no 
APCs.
In brief, one can say that the “long tail” of small OA journals (92% of total) 
published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those without 
APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals).
There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawford’s study that allows 
the interested reader to explore issues 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Richard Poynder]

Hi Heather,

I am not sure I follow your logic. As I read it, FWF-funded researchers
publish in non-APC journals too, but fewer of them. I don't think you are
suggesting that researchers are told by FWF which publishers they are
supposed to publish with?

What I take from the FWF figures is that most of the OA journals that
researchers want to publish in charge an APC.

By the way, FWF also supports models that do not charge an APC:
https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/forschungsfoerderung/open-access-policy/open-access-publikationsmodelle/

Richard


On 26 April 2018 at 22:56, Heather Morrison 
wrote:

> Thanks Richard.
>
> I see that the FWF makes funding available for open access article
> processing charges and targets particular publishers that use the APC
> method. Details here: https://m.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-
> programmes/peer-reviewed-publications/
>
> This is a tautological argument: FWF pays APCs because they fund APCs. I
> would expect the same in the UK. The RCUK has provided block funding to pay
> for APCs. It seems reasonable to hypothesize that this approach results in
> APC payments and a tendency to find that UK funded research will be found
> in APC journals.
>
> Scielo is a journal subsidy model. When countries subsidize journals for
> OA, the tendency is to not charge APCs.
>
> In other words, what model(s) to support is a policy decision with
> real-world impacts.
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
>
>
>  Original message 
> From: Richard Poynder 
> Date: 2018-04-26 5:28 PM (GMT-05:00)
> To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
> Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt
> with Mahmoud Khalifa
>
> Hi Marc,
>
> Thanks for providing these figures. Maybe we could consider them alongside
> some figures produced by the  Austrian Science Fund (FWF) here:
>
> http://beta.briefideas.org/ideas/f2e9ebaa34cd5655203c7de332618061.
>
> I quote:
>
> *Problem:* There is an ongoing debate on the share of OAJ and OAA
> charging APC from authors. It has been shown that 67% of OAJ listed in the
> Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) work without APC and costs get
> subsidised by other resources. But it is still unclear what the actual
> share of OAA in OAJ with and without APC is
>
> *Data:* We analysed this question for OAA published via FWF funded
> projects from 1/2013 to 8/2015. The sample includes 730 pure OAA published
> in 224 OAJ (Hybrid OAA are excluded).
>
> *Results*: 83.0% (186) of the OAJ charge APC, while 17.0% (38) of the OAJ
> don’t. On the article level, 93.6% (683) of the articles were published
> with and 6.4% (47) without APC. This is driven by the fact that 84.9% (620)
> of all articles are published in journals from just 15 publishers charging
> APC by default.
>
> Richard
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 26 April 2018 at 17:32, Marc Couture  wrote:
>
>> Peter Murray-Rust wrote :
>>
>>
>>
>> >
>>
>> I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of
>> the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
>> resolve this.
>> >
>>
>> To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the
>> works of Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals.
>> Yes, I know it’s not peer-reviewed research, but don’t let me start on this
>> (besides, I have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals,
>> and Walt’s work certainly meets the usual scientific standards).
>>
>> Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access
>> Journals 2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html)
>>
>> In 2016 :
>>
>> 1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles
>> that year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing
>> 43% of the articles, had no APCs.
>>
>> 2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published
>> 280k articles (54% of total).
>> Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had
>> no APCs.
>>
>> 3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total)
>> published 240k articles (46% of total).
>> Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had
>> no APCs.
>>
>> In brief, one can say that the “long tail” of small OA journals (92% of
>> total) published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those
>> without APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals).
>>
>> There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawford’s study that
>> allows the interested reader to explore issues like differences between
>> domains, publisher types, regions, etc. And, in the spirit of open science,
>> the underlying data are available.
>>
>> Marc Couture
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *De :* goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] *De la
>> part de* Peter Murray-Rust
>> *Envoyé :* 25 avril 2018 11:56
>> *À :* Global Open 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Heather Morrison]

Thanks Richard.

I see that the FWF makes funding available for open access article processing 
charges and targets particular publishers that use the APC method. Details 
here: 
https://m.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/fwf-programmes/peer-reviewed-publications/

This is a tautological argument: FWF pays APCs because they fund APCs. I would 
expect the same in the UK. The RCUK has provided block funding to pay for APCs. 
It seems reasonable to hypothesize that this approach results in APC payments 
and a tendency to find that UK funded research will be found in APC journals.

Scielo is a journal subsidy model. When countries subsidize journals for OA, 
the tendency is to not charge APCs.

In other words, what model(s) to support is a policy decision with real-world 
impacts.

best,

Heather Morrison


 Original message 
From: Richard Poynder 
Date: 2018-04-26 5:28 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Hi Marc,

Thanks for providing these figures. Maybe we could consider them alongside some 
figures produced by the  Austrian Science Fund (FWF) here:

http://beta.briefideas.org/ideas/f2e9ebaa34cd5655203c7de332618061.

I quote:

Problem: There is an ongoing debate on the share of OAJ and OAA charging APC 
from authors. It has been shown that 67% of OAJ listed in the Directory of Open 
Access Journals (DOAJ) work without APC and costs get subsidised by other 
resources. But it is still unclear what the actual share of OAA in OAJ with and 
without APC is


Data: We analysed this question for OAA published via FWF funded projects from 
1/2013 to 8/2015. The sample includes 730 pure OAA published in 224 OAJ (Hybrid 
OAA are excluded).

Results: 83.0% (186) of the OAJ charge APC, while 17.0% (38) of the OAJ don’t. 
On the article level, 93.6% (683) of the articles were published with and 6.4% 
(47) without APC. This is driven by the fact that 84.9% (620) of all articles 
are published in journals from just 15 publishers charging APC by default.

Richard







On 26 April 2018 at 17:32, Marc Couture 
> wrote:
Peter Murray-Rust wrote :

>
I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the 
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve 
this.
>
To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the works of 
Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals. Yes, I know 
it’s not peer-reviewed research, but don’t let me start on this (besides, I 
have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals, and Walt’s work 
certainly meets the usual scientific standards).
Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access Journals 
2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html)
In 2016 :
1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles that 
year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing 43% of 
the articles, had no APCs.
2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published 280k 
articles (54% of total).
Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had no APCs.
3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total) published 240k 
articles (46% of total).
Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had no 
APCs.
In brief, one can say that the “long tail” of small OA journals (92% of total) 
published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those without 
APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals).
There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawford’s study that allows 
the interested reader to explore issues like differences between domains, 
publisher types, regions, etc. And, in the spirit of open science, the 
underlying data are available.
Marc Couture


De : goal-boun...@eprints.org 
[mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] De la part 
de Peter Murray-Rust
Envoyé : 25 avril 2018 11:56
À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Objet : Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is 
misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the normal 
power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) the following 
are by statistical definition true:

* most journals have small volumes
* most papers are published in a few large volume journals
That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not.
I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the 
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve 
this.
Now ... for speculation

The long tail of small journals are 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Richard Poynder]

Hi Marc,

Thanks for providing these figures. Maybe we could consider them alongside
some figures produced by the  Austrian Science Fund (FWF) here:

http://beta.briefideas.org/ideas/f2e9ebaa34cd5655203c7de332618061.

I quote:

*Problem:* There is an ongoing debate on the share of OAJ and OAA charging
APC from authors. It has been shown that 67% of OAJ listed in the Directory
of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) work without APC and costs get subsidised by
other resources. But it is still unclear what the actual share of OAA in
OAJ with and without APC is

*Data:* We analysed this question for OAA published via FWF funded projects
from 1/2013 to 8/2015. The sample includes 730 pure OAA published in 224
OAJ (Hybrid OAA are excluded).

*Results*: 83.0% (186) of the OAJ charge APC, while 17.0% (38) of the OAJ
don’t. On the article level, 93.6% (683) of the articles were published
with and 6.4% (47) without APC. This is driven by the fact that 84.9% (620)
of all articles are published in journals from just 15 publishers charging
APC by default.

Richard







On 26 April 2018 at 17:32, Marc Couture  wrote:

> Peter Murray-Rust wrote :
>
>
>
> >
>
> I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of
> the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
> resolve this.
> >
>
> To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the works
> of Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals. Yes,
> I know it’s not peer-reviewed research, but don’t let me start on this
> (besides, I have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals,
> and Walt’s work certainly meets the usual scientific standards).
>
> Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access
> Journals 2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html)
>
> In 2016 :
>
> 1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles
> that year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing
> 43% of the articles, had no APCs.
>
> 2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published
> 280k articles (54% of total).
> Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had no
> APCs.
>
> 3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total) published
> 240k articles (46% of total).
> Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had
> no APCs.
>
> In brief, one can say that the “long tail” of small OA journals (92% of
> total) published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those
> without APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals).
>
> There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawford’s study that
> allows the interested reader to explore issues like differences between
> domains, publisher types, regions, etc. And, in the spirit of open science,
> the underlying data are available.
>
> Marc Couture
>
>
>
>
>
> *De :* goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] *De la
> part de* Peter Murray-Rust
> *Envoyé :* 25 avril 2018 11:56
> *À :* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Objet :* Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt
> with Mahmoud Khalifa
>
>
>
> I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is
> misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the
> normal power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law)
> the following are by statistical definition true:
>
> * most journals have small volumes
> * most papers are published in a few large volume journals
>
> That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not.
>
> I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of
> the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
> resolve this.
>
> Now ... for speculation
>
>
> The long tail of small journals are likely to be niche journals in some
> way. There are exceptions such as the J Machine Learning Research which is
> APC-less, and CC BY  run by the goodwill of the community. That used to be
> fairly common. (I used to be the treasurer of a scholarly society and all
> work was voluntary). When all the articles are from and to a smallish
> community of practice it makes sense. But I suspect that when a journal
> gets to a over a few hundred articles a year then most organizations need
> to pay staff to manage the process. Maybe not much. But it's a temptation
> to solve the admin by paying.
>
> Then the options are:
>
> * subsidise from elsewhere (University, or in my society's case revenue
> from events).
>
> * membership scheme - I believe arXiv is subsidized through a membership
> scheme.
>
> * charge authors
>
> * charge readers
>
> And so most large journals need to raise income.
>
> P.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 3:46 PM, Richard Poynder <
> richard.poyn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Heather,
>
>
>
> Personally, I think that any statement 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Marc Couture]

Peter Murray-Rust wrote :



>

I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
resolve this.
>

To get a (much) more detailed description of the OA world, I use the works
of Walt Crawford, who did incredibly thorough studies of OA journals. Yes, I
know it’s not peer-reviewed research, but don’t let me start on this
(besides, I have reviewed a few papers on the subject for various journals,
and Walt’s work certainly meets the usual scientific standards).

Thus, according to his comprehensive study GOAJ2 - Gold Open Access Journals
2011-2016 (http://waltcrawford.name/goaj.html)

In 2016 :

1. Among the 8.4k journals listed in DOAJ and having published articles that
year, for a total of ~520k articles, 68 % of the journals, publishing 43% of
the articles, had no APCs.

2. The 700 largest (> 150 articles/y) journals (8% of total) published 280k
articles (54% of total).
Among these, 220 journals (31%), publishing 63k articles (22%), had no
APCs.

3. The 7.7k smallest (< 150 articles/y) journals (92 % of total) published
240k articles (46% of total).
Among these, 5.5k journals (72%), publishing 160k articles (67%) had no
APCs.

In brief, one can say that the “long tail” of small OA journals (92% of
total) published a little bit less than half of the articles, 2/3 of those
without APCs (compared to less than 1/4 for the large journals).

There is a wealth of information and data in Walt Crawford’s study that
allows the interested reader to explore issues like differences between
domains, publisher types, regions, etc. And, in the spirit of open science,
the underlying data are available.

Marc Couture





De : goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] De la part
de Peter Murray-Rust
Envoyé : 25 avril 2018 11:56
À : Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Objet : Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with
Mahmoud Khalifa



I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is
misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the
normal power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) the
following are by statistical definition true:

* most journals have small volumes
* most papers are published in a few large volume journals

That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not.

I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
resolve this.

Now ... for speculation


The long tail of small journals are likely to be niche journals in some way.
There are exceptions such as the J Machine Learning Research which is
APC-less, and CC BY  run by the goodwill of the community. That used to be
fairly common. (I used to be the treasurer of a scholarly society and all
work was voluntary). When all the articles are from and to a smallish
community of practice it makes sense. But I suspect that when a journal gets
to a over a few hundred articles a year then most organizations need to pay
staff to manage the process. Maybe not much. But it's a temptation to solve
the admin by paying.

Then the options are:

* subsidise from elsewhere (University, or in my society's case revenue from
events).

* membership scheme - I believe arXiv is subsidized through a membership
scheme.

* charge authors

* charge readers

And so most large journals need to raise income.

P.







On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 3:46 PM, Richard Poynder 
wrote:

Heather,



Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do
not charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by Hilda
Bastian:



http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-
access-to-open-access-publishing/



Extract:



'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could well
be true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source that’s
used to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access
Journals. One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is whether or
not the journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for an open
access (OA) publication.





But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does
harm. As long as people can argue that there are just so many options for
fee-free publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about
eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and
colleagues show in the field of global health research, the APC is adding a
new stratification of researchers globally, between those who can afford
open publishing in highly regarded journals, and those who can’t.'



Richard





On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
wrote:

Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Heather Morrison]

hi Richard,

I think it is reasonable to assume that PLOS bloggers are part of the PLOS 
community, whether they are paid by PLOS or not.

Perhaps PLOS can speak to their policies and practices with respect to the PLOS 
blog.

Although I am an OA advocate, I strongly oppose some of PLOS' advocacy 
positions. I argue that CC-BY as default for OA is a major strategic error that 
invokes ethical and legal concerns. I am not opposed to APC, but it is not the 
only model and I do not support policies that favour this model exclusively. I 
do not like PLOS One's to me excessively automated approach to peer review and 
object strongly to being in their system.

PLOS has not invited me to participate in their blog, even though I frequently 
comment on matters related to open access. Is this because my views do not 
reflect those of the PLOS community? Has PLOS reached out to those who prefer 
traditional publishers such as Elsevier and asked them to contribute to the 
PLOS blog? Have they reached out to the editors of OA journals that don't use 
CC-BY and/or APCs and asked them to contribute their perspective to the PLOS 
blog?

I hope that Hilda enjoys a nice income. If PLOS is not paying their regular 
bloggers, perhaps they should.

best,

Heather


 Original message 
From: Richard Poynder 
Date: 2018-04-25 12:21 PM (GMT-05:00)
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" 
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Heather,

I could be wrong, but I am thinking that you are implying that Hilda Bastian is 
an employee, or some kind of spokesperson, for PLOS. If so, you have inferred 
incorrectly.

See this tweet:

https://twitter.com/PLOS/status/989174553657032704?s=19

Richard



On Wed, 25 Apr 2018, 16:21 Heather Morrison, 
> wrote:

The Public Library of Science has done important work in the areas of open 
access advocacy and open access publishing. However, it is important to 
understand that PLOS is also a publishing business, even if it is 
not-for-profit. Their business model is based on APCs. PLOS staff arguing on 
the importance of APCs and discounting arguments for other business models is 
essentially the same thing as traditional commercial publishers arguing for the 
subscriptions model and discounting arguments for any OA business model. PLOS, 
in this respect, is understandably looking out for their own interests.


I am a recently tenured professor with many friends who are emerging scholars, 
students who would like to go on to tenured positions, and a workload that is 
impacted by university hiring (or lack thereof) of new professors and support 
staff. When I argue for funding for university hiring, I am arguing for my own 
interests and the interests of this sector, one that in my experience has been 
under-represented in open access discussions.


best,


Heather


From: goal-boun...@eprints.org 
> on behalf of 
Richard Poynder >
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 10:46:48 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Heather,

Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do not 
charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by Hilda 
Bastian:

http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/

Extract:

'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could well be 
true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source that’s used 
to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access Journals. 
One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is whether or not the 
journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for an open access (OA) 
publication.


But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does harm. 
As long as people can argue that there are just so many options for fee-free 
publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about eliminating, or 
at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and colleagues show in the 
field of global health research, the APC is adding a new stratification of 
researchers globally, between those who can afford open publishing in highly 
regarded journals, and those who can’t.'

Richard


On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in reverse. 
Data and calculations follow.

73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.

To calculate go to DOAJ 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Bosman, J.M. (Jeroen)]

Peter, Heather, Richard, Chris, others,

agree with Peter that we should not simply use the mantra that most OA journals 
do not charge, as indeed those will mostly be the small ones. Would love to get 
some data on business models used per article in DOAJ covered journals.

On the other hand, dismissing the potential roles of those thousands of smaller 
journals with a lot of very dedicated people behind them is not the route I 
would like to go. If they would receive double the number of submissions, they 
would probably still be able to deal with that without starting to charge 
outrageous charges or the need to set up and pay dedicated staff.

Consider a situation with 11K journals, with 1K APC journals publishing 500 
papers per journal per annum and 10K diamond non-APC journals publishing 50 
papers per journal. All together that is 1M papers.

Now double the size of the 10K smaller journals to 100 papers per journal, 
still manageable without staff, shiny offices, greedy shareholders and 
marketing nonsense. That makes 1M papers, with no need anymore for authors to 
submit to the profit seeking larger journals.

Of course the smaller journals would need to be able to rely on distributed 
infrastructure from preprint archives, DOAJ, Sherpa, Crossref/Datacite, OJS and 
such. They could become overlay journals and PR communities for content 
submitted initially to preprint platforms.

So yes, I agree with leaving simple majority of OA journals are free to publish 
but I would argue for seeing them as potential great asset in a more thorough 
reshuffling of roles in the scholarly communication system.

Jeroen Bosman
Utrecht University

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] on behalf of Peter 
Murray-Rust [pm...@cam.ac.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 5:56 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [***SPAM***] Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from 
Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is 
misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the normal 
power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) the following 
are by statistical definition true:

* most journals have small volumes
* most papers are published in a few large volume journals

That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not.

I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of the 
distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will resolve 
this.

Now ... for speculation

The long tail of small journals are likely to be niche journals in some way. 
There are exceptions such as the J Machine Learning Research which is APC-less, 
and CC BY  run by the goodwill of the community. That used to be fairly common. 
(I used to be the treasurer of a scholarly society and all work was voluntary). 
When all the articles are from and to a smallish community of practice it makes 
sense. But I suspect that when a journal gets to a over a few hundred articles 
a year then most organizations need to pay staff to manage the process. Maybe 
not much. But it's a temptation to solve the admin by paying.

Then the options are:
* subsidise from elsewhere (University, or in my society's case revenue from 
events).
* membership scheme - I believe arXiv is subsidized through a membership scheme.
* charge authors
* charge readers

And so most large journals need to raise income.

P.




On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 3:46 PM, Richard Poynder 
> wrote:
Heather,

Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do not 
charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by Hilda 
Bastian:

http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/

Extract:

'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could well be 
true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source that’s used 
to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access Journals. 
One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is whether or not the 
journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for an open access (OA) 
publication.


But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does harm. 
As long as people can argue that there are just so many options for fee-free 
publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about eliminating, or 
at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and colleagues show in the 
field of global health research, the APC is adding a new stratification of 
researchers globally, between those who can afford open publishing in highly 
regarded journals, and those who can’t.'

Richard


On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Richard Poynder]

Heather,

I could be wrong, but I am thinking that you are implying that Hilda
Bastian is an employee, or some kind of spokesperson, for PLOS. If so, you
have inferred incorrectly.

See this tweet:

https://twitter.com/PLOS/status/989174553657032704?s=19

Richard



On Wed, 25 Apr 2018, 16:21 Heather Morrison, 
wrote:

> The Public Library of Science has done important work in the areas of open
> access advocacy and open access publishing. However, it is important to
> understand that PLOS is also a publishing business, even if it is
> not-for-profit. Their business model is based on APCs. PLOS staff arguing
> on the importance of APCs and discounting arguments for other business
> models is essentially the same thing as traditional commercial publishers
> arguing for the subscriptions model and discounting arguments for any OA
> business model. PLOS, in this respect, is understandably looking out for
> their own interests.
>
>
> I am a recently tenured professor with many friends who are emerging
> scholars, students who would like to go on to tenured positions, and a
> workload that is impacted by university hiring (or lack thereof) of new
> professors and support staff. When I argue for funding for university
> hiring, I am arguing for my own interests and the interests of this sector,
> one that in my experience has been under-represented in open access
> discussions.
>
>
> best,
>
>
> Heather
> --
> *From:* goal-boun...@eprints.org  on behalf of
> Richard Poynder 
> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 25, 2018 10:46:48 AM
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt
> with Mahmoud Khalifa
>
> Heather,
>
> Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do
> not charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by
> Hilda Bastian:
>
>
> http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/
>
> Extract:
>
> 'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could
> well be true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source
> that’s used to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open
> Access Journals. One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is
> whether or not the journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for
> an open access (OA) publication.
>
> But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does
> harm. As long as people can argue that there are just *so many* options
> for fee-free publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency
> about eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle
> Siler and colleagues show in the field of global health research, the APC
> is adding a new stratification of researchers globally, between those who
> can afford open publishing in highly regarded journals, and those who
> can’t.'
>
> Richard
>
>
> On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
>
>> Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in
>> reverse. Data and calculations follow.
>>
>> 73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.
>>
>> To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles
>> select journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today,
>> April 25, 2108, the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has
>> an APC is:
>>
>> 8,250: no (73%)
>> 2,979 yes (26%)
>> 65: no information (.5%)
>>
>> Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294
>> (Note rounding error)
>>
>> OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and
>> indirect sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social
>> Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly
>> Journals Program. Journals can apply for grants; these applications go
>> through a journal-level peer review process. This program has been in place
>> for many years. Originally all supported journals were subscription-based.
>> The trend is towards open access, with many journals now fully OA and all
>> or almost all have free access after an embargo period.
>>
>> I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals
>> that also ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no
>> existing program in place would probably find it easier to start with an OA
>> requirement than those with legacy programs like SSHRC.
>>
>> Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available
>> for research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture,
>> history, local environmental and social conditions are important matters to
>> study, but not high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these
>> topics risk rejection from international journal due to selection based on
>> 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I agree with Ricky and Hilda that the "most journals charge no APCs" is
misleading. It's been around for years and has worried me. Assuming the
normal power-law distribution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law) the
following are by statistical definition true:

* most journals have small volumes
* most papers are published in a few large volume journals

That's true regardless of whether they are Open Access or not.

I suspect that the "most journals have no APCs " are in the long tail of
the distribution. If you correlate volume of articles against APC you will
resolve this.

Now ... for speculation

The long tail of small journals are likely to be niche journals in some
way. There are exceptions such as the J Machine Learning Research which is
APC-less, and CC BY  run by the goodwill of the community. That used to be
fairly common. (I used to be the treasurer of a scholarly society and all
work was voluntary). When all the articles are from and to a smallish
community of practice it makes sense. But I suspect that when a journal
gets to a over a few hundred articles a year then most organizations need
to pay staff to manage the process. Maybe not much. But it's a temptation
to solve the admin by paying.

Then the options are:
* subsidise from elsewhere (University, or in my society's case revenue
from events).
* membership scheme - I believe arXiv is subsidized through a membership
scheme.
* charge authors
* charge readers

And so most large journals need to raise income.

P.




On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 3:46 PM, Richard Poynder 
wrote:

> Heather,
>
> Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do
> not charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by
> Hilda Bastian:
>
> http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-
> reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/
>
> Extract:
>
> 'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could
> well be true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source
> that’s used to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open
> Access Journals. One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is
> whether or not the journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for
> an open access (OA) publication.
>
> But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does
> harm. As long as people can argue that there are just *so many* options
> for fee-free publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency
> about eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle
> Siler and colleagues show in the field of global health research, the APC
> is adding a new stratification of researchers globally, between those who
> can afford open publishing in highly regarded journals, and those who
> can’t.'
>
> Richard
>
>
> On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
>
>> Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in
>> reverse. Data and calculations follow.
>>
>> 73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.
>>
>> To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles
>> select journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today,
>> April 25, 2108, the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has
>> an APC is:
>>
>> 8,250: no (73%)
>> 2,979 yes (26%)
>> 65: no information (.5%)
>>
>> Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294
>> (Note rounding error)
>>
>> OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and
>> indirect sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social
>> Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly
>> Journals Program. Journals can apply for grants; these applications go
>> through a journal-level peer review process. This program has been in place
>> for many years. Originally all supported journals were subscription-based.
>> The trend is towards open access, with many journals now fully OA and all
>> or almost all have free access after an embargo period.
>>
>> I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals
>> that also ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no
>> existing program in place would probably find it easier to start with an OA
>> requirement than those with legacy programs like SSHRC.
>>
>> Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available
>> for research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture,
>> history, local environmental and social conditions are important matters to
>> study, but not high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these
>> topics risk rejection from international journal due to selection based on
>> reader interest rather than the quality or importance of the work.
>>
>> Local publishing does not exclude global scholarly engagement. Canada has
>> a large francophone population; our researchers in 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Heather Morrison]

The Public Library of Science has done important work in the areas of open 
access advocacy and open access publishing. However, it is important to 
understand that PLOS is also a publishing business, even if it is 
not-for-profit. Their business model is based on APCs. PLOS staff arguing on 
the importance of APCs and discounting arguments for other business models is 
essentially the same thing as traditional commercial publishers arguing for the 
subscriptions model and discounting arguments for any OA business model. PLOS, 
in this respect, is understandably looking out for their own interests.


I am a recently tenured professor with many friends who are emerging scholars, 
students who would like to go on to tenured positions, and a workload that is 
impacted by university hiring (or lack thereof) of new professors and support 
staff. When I argue for funding for university hiring, I am arguing for my own 
interests and the interests of this sector, one that in my experience has been 
under-represented in open access discussions.


best,


Heather


From: goal-boun...@eprints.org  on behalf of Richard 
Poynder 
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2018 10:46:48 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa

Heather,

Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do not 
charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by Hilda 
Bastian:

http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/

Extract:

'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could well be 
true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source that’s used 
to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open Access Journals. 
One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is whether or not the 
journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for an open access (OA) 
publication.


But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does harm. 
As long as people can argue that there are just so many options for fee-free 
publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about eliminating, or 
at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and colleagues show in the 
field of global health research, the APC is adding a new stratification of 
researchers globally, between those who can afford open publishing in highly 
regarded journals, and those who can’t.'

Richard


On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
> wrote:
Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in reverse. 
Data and calculations follow.

73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.

To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles select 
journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today, April 25, 2108, 
the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has an APC is:

8,250: no (73%)
2,979 yes (26%)
65: no information (.5%)

Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294
(Note rounding error)

OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and indirect 
sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social Sciences and 
Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly Journals Program. 
Journals can apply for grants; these applications go through a journal-level 
peer review process. This program has been in place for many years. Originally 
all supported journals were subscription-based. The trend is towards open 
access, with many journals now fully OA and all or almost all have free access 
after an embargo period.

I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals that also 
ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no existing program in 
place would probably find it easier to start with an OA requirement than those 
with legacy programs like SSHRC.

Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available for 
research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture, history, local 
environmental and social conditions are important matters to study, but not 
high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these topics risk 
rejection from international journal due to selection based on reader interest 
rather than the quality or importance of the work.

Local publishing does not exclude global scholarly engagement. Canada has a 
large francophone population; our researchers in language, culture, and history 
often work with scholars in West Africa, France, Haiti, Belgium, etc.

For Canada's arctic researchers, "local" has geographic rather than local 
significance.

This is reflected in authorship and editorial boards. A journal hosted and with 
editorial leadership in 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Richard Poynder]

Heather,

Personally, I think that any statement that says that most OA journals do
not charge an APC needs to be set alongside the following blog post by
Hilda Bastian:

http://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2018/04/02/a-reality-check-on-author-access-to-open-access-publishing/

Extract:

'Technically, the “most journals don’t charge authors” statement could well
be true. Most open access journals may not charge authors. The source
that’s used to support the claim is generally DOAJ – the Directory of Open
Access Journals. One of the pieces of meta-data for journals in DOAJ is
whether or not the journal levies an APC – an author processing charge for
an open access (OA) publication.

But I think this is a data framing that’s deeply misleading. And it does
harm. As long as people can argue that there are just *so many* options for
fee-free publishing, then there will be less of a sense of urgency about
eliminating, or at least drastically reducing, APCs. As Kyle Siler and
colleagues show in the field of global health research, the APC is adding a
new stratification of researchers globally, between those who can afford
open publishing in highly regarded journals, and those who can’t.'

Richard


On 25 April 2018 at 15:16, Heather Morrison 
wrote:

> Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in
> reverse. Data and calculations follow.
>
> 73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.
>
> To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles select
> journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today, April 25,
> 2108, the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has an APC is:
>
> 8,250: no (73%)
> 2,979 yes (26%)
> 65: no information (.5%)
>
> Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294
> (Note rounding error)
>
> OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and
> indirect sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social
> Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly
> Journals Program. Journals can apply for grants; these applications go
> through a journal-level peer review process. This program has been in place
> for many years. Originally all supported journals were subscription-based.
> The trend is towards open access, with many journals now fully OA and all
> or almost all have free access after an embargo period.
>
> I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals that
> also ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no existing
> program in place would probably find it easier to start with an OA
> requirement than those with legacy programs like SSHRC.
>
> Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available for
> research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture, history,
> local environmental and social conditions are important matters to study,
> but not high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these topics
> risk rejection from international journal due to selection based on reader
> interest rather than the quality or importance of the work.
>
> Local publishing does not exclude global scholarly engagement. Canada has
> a large francophone population; our researchers in language, culture, and
> history often work with scholars in West Africa, France, Haiti, Belgium,
> etc.
>
> For Canada's arctic researchers, "local" has geographic rather than local
> significance.
>
> This is reflected in authorship and editorial boards. A journal hosted and
> with editorial leadership in Canada will often include international
> content and reviewers. Journals produced locally can be read anywhere,
> especially if they are open access.
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
> Associate Professor, University of Ottawa School of Information Studies
> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons - a SSHRC Insight Project
> Sustainingknowledgecommons.org
>  Original message 
> From: Chris Zielinski 
> Date: 2018-04-25 6:38 AM (GMT-05:00)
> To: richard.poyn...@cantab.net
> Cc: goal@eprints.org
> Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt
> with Mahmoud Khalifa
>
> Richard,
>
> In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to
> the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA
> discussion of this topic:
>
> -- Original Message --
> To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All 
> Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33
> Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)
>
> In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author
> wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good
> enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review,
> redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did
> some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the
> 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Heather Morrison]

Correction: Chris, you have the proportion of OA journals with APCs in reverse. 
Data and calculations follow.

73% of fully OA journals (about three quarters) do not charge APCs.

To calculate go to DOAJ Advanced Search, select journals / articles select 
journals, and click on Article Processing Charges. As of today, April 25, 2108, 
the response to the DOAJ question of whether a journal has an APC is:

8,250: no (73%)
2,979 yes (26%)
65: no information (.5%)

Total # of journals in DOAJ: 11,294
(Note rounding error)

OA journals with no APCs have a variety of business models. Direct and indirect 
sponsorship appears to be common. For example in Canada our Social Sciences and 
Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has an Aid to Scholarly Journals Program. 
Journals can apply for grants; these applications go through a journal-level 
peer review process. This program has been in place for many years. Originally 
all supported journals were subscription-based. The trend is towards open 
access, with many journals now fully OA and all or almost all have free access 
after an embargo period.

I recommend this model as a means of support for open access journals that also 
ensure high-level academic quality control. Regions with no existing program in 
place would probably find it easier to start with an OA requirement than those 
with legacy programs like SSHRC.

Local journals are important to ensure publishing venues are available for 
research of local significance. Canadian law, politics, culture, history, local 
environmental and social conditions are important matters to study, but not 
high priority for readers outside Canada. Articles on these topics risk 
rejection from international journal due to selection based on reader interest 
rather than the quality or importance of the work.

Local publishing does not exclude global scholarly engagement. Canada has a 
large francophone population; our researchers in language, culture, and history 
often work with scholars in West Africa, France, Haiti, Belgium, etc.

For Canada's arctic researchers, "local" has geographic rather than local 
significance.

This is reflected in authorship and editorial boards. A journal hosted and with 
editorial leadership in Canada will often include international content and 
reviewers. Journals produced locally can be read anywhere, especially if they 
are open access.

best,

Heather Morrison
Associate Professor, University of Ottawa School of Information Studies
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons - a SSHRC Insight Project
Sustainingknowledgecommons.org
 Original message 
From: Chris Zielinski 
Date: 2018-04-25 6:38 AM (GMT-05:00)
To: richard.poyn...@cantab.net
Cc: goal@eprints.org
Subject: Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with 
Mahmoud Khalifa


Richard,

In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to the 
Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA discussion 
of this topic:

-- Original Message --
To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All 
Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33
Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)


In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author wrote 
a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good enough, the 
generous people at the journal organized peer review, redid/redesigned the 
tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did some language editing - at 
no cost to the author. Then they published the journal, charging for access to 
the paper version and pay-walling any online version. From the author's 
perspective, thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were 
cost barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly onerous 
in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries was good for 
authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for librarians and readers, 
who had to find the money to buy the content.

Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the situation 
reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of cost-free online 
papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources to pay for 
publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that authors in 
developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the "Article 
Processing Charge" (APC).

Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we assume 
that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be rather more 
likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones.

Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized countries 
and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for papers. But 
the kind of health research that is essential in developing countries - health 
services and health systems research - is generally undertaken by local 
institutions 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Peter Murray-Rust]

I agree with Jan. Read the Budapest Declaration of Open Access (Jan was a
signatory). It is one of the most compelling documents in the last decade.
(I have been tweeting it today):

"he public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic
distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free
and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers,
students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this
literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning
of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature
as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a
common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge."

This is technically possible today. We should be interchanging knowledge at
all levels if we are to use knowledge to help support people and the
planet. The Ebola outbreak in Liberia was predicted 35 years ago - it's
still behind a paywall.  I can mine the whole scientific literature every
day for predictions of new viral outbreaks, of antibiotic resistance, of
the spread of crop pests. of drug safety, of the effects of climate, ...
It's all possible, except I will be sued by the publishers and hounded by
senior academics.

Either we see published knowledge as a critically important good, too
precious not to use to the full ...
... or we perpetuate a system that deprives 90+% of humanity and often
makes knowledge worse.

P.




On Wed, Apr 25, 2018 at 12:18 PM, Velterop  wrote:

> The thing is, Chris, that payments, be they APCs or subscription charges,
> are for the 'service' of publisher-mediated peer review (plus 'prestige
> ribbons') and access to publisher-mediated peer-reviewed (and 'ribboned')
> articles. They are not for publishing one's research results per se. That
> can be done at no cost or at very low, often negligible, cost. For instance
> via 'preprint' facilities or other repositories. I realise that for many a
> researcher having 'ribbons' pinned on their articles is important for
> career advancement and possibly also for reputation, but that is where the
> real problem lies. As long as the scholarly culture expects and demands
> publisher-mediated peer review and the 'prestige ribbons' associated with
> that, there will be a cost beyond the generally (very, or negligibly) low
> cost of just making one's articles publicly and freely available – open –
> to be reviewed, commented on, assessed, etc. by the community at large. The
> process of proper scientific discourse, in other words. That's where
> scicomm/scholcomm should be headed. I hope you agree.
>
> Best,
>
> Jan
>
>
> Jan Velterop
>
> velte...@protonmail.com
>
> On 25/04/2018 12:17, Chris Zielinski wrote:
>
> Richard,
>
> In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to
> the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA
> discussion of this topic:
>
> -- Original Message --
> To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All 
> 
> Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33
> Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)
>
> In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author
> wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good
> enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review,
> redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did
> some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the
> journal, charging for access to the paper version and pay-walling any
> online version. From the author's perspective, thus, there was no barrier
> to publication, although there were cost barriers to reading the paper
> subsequently, which was particularly onerous in poorer countries. So the
> situation in developing countries was good for authors - who simply had to
> write well - and bad for librarians and readers, who had to find the money
> to buy the content.
>
> Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the
> situation reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of
> cost-free online papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources
> to pay for publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that
> authors in developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the
> "Article Processing Charge" (APC).
>
> Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we
> assume that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be
> rather more likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones.
>
> Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized
> countries and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for
> papers. But the kind of health research that is essential in developing
> countries - health services and health systems research - is generally
> undertaken by local institutions 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Jan Velterop]

Chris, 
Your first point in particular is a valid one, of course, but the question is 
whether publication in academic journals do indeed reach beyond the confines of 
the ivory tower. It is my impression that it only does in rare instances, or 
via journalistic ‘translations’ in non-academic media and the general press. OA 
is probably  better than subscription, in that those outside academia can get 
the full articles without hitting paywalls (though savvy people are aware of 
SciHub), but again, in the overwhelming number of cases there is a cost 
associated with journal/publisher-mediated peer reviewed publication. If you’d 
want to reach those outside the ivory tower whose opinions matter via journals, 
and you believe that is an effective route, the cost of APCs might be seen in a 
way similar to the cost of advertising. 
Best,
Jan

Johannes (Jan) J M Velterop
velte...@protonmail.com

Sent from Jan Velterop's iPhone. Please excuse for brevity and typos. 

> On 25 Apr 2018, at 13:41, Chris Zielinski  wrote:
> 
> Regarding the comments of David Prosser and Jan Velterop, I would note that 
> for researchers working on health services or health systems research in a 
> developing country, the purpose of publishing in an international journal can 
> be twofold: 1) to solicit an international eye on what they are doing - 
> feedback, consensus, validation etc. - which can help in subsequently using 
> the research to establish new protocols and new administrative procedures in 
> their local health systems, and 2) to score some academic brownie points.
> 
> Let me stress that this is an observation only related to research covering 
> health systems and health services, and that it implies a step beyond the 
> ivory towers into the dizzying (to some academics) world of applying research 
> results to real life - which is the main point of health systems/service 
> research.
> 
> You can publish anywhere of course - but will you be seen there by everyone 
> whose opinions matter?
> 
> 
> Chris Zielinski
> ch...@chriszielinski.com
> Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com 
> Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net
> 
>> On 25 April 2018 at 11:18 Velterop  wrote: 
>> 
>> The thing is, Chris, that payments, be they APCs or subscription charges, 
>> are for the 'service' of publisher-mediated peer review (plus 'prestige 
>> ribbons') and access to publisher-mediated peer-reviewed (and 'ribboned') 
>> articles. They are not for publishing one's research results per se. That 
>> can be done at no cost or at very low, often negligible, cost. For instance 
>> via 'preprint' facilities or other repositories. I realise that for many a 
>> researcher having 'ribbons' pinned on their articles is important for career 
>> advancement and possibly also for reputation, but that is where the real 
>> problem lies. As long as the scholarly culture expects and demands 
>> publisher-mediated peer review and the 'prestige ribbons' associated with 
>> that, there will be a cost beyond the generally (very, or negligibly) low 
>> cost of just making one's articles publicly and freely available – open – to 
>> be reviewed, commented on, assessed, etc. by the community at large. The 
>> process of proper scientific discourse, in other words. That's where 
>> scicomm/scholcomm should be headed. I hope you agree.
>> 
>> Best,
>> 
>> Jan 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Jan Velterop
>> 
>> velte...@protonmail.com
>> 
>> 
>>> On 25/04/2018 12:17, Chris Zielinski wrote: 
>>> Richard,
>>> 
>>> In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to 
>>> the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA 
>>> discussion of this topic:
>>> 
>>> -- Original Message -- 
>>> To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All  
>>> Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33 
>>> Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3) 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author 
>>> wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good 
>>> enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review, 
>>> redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did 
>>> some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the 
>>> journal, charging for access to the paper version and pay-walling any 
>>> online version. From the author's perspective, thus, there was no barrier 
>>> to publication, although there were cost barriers to reading the paper 
>>> subsequently, which was particularly onerous in poorer countries. So the 
>>> situation in developing countries was good for authors - who simply had to 
>>> write well - and bad for librarians and readers, who had to find the money 
>>> to buy the content.
>>> 
>>> Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the 
>>> situation reversed - librarians 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Chris Zielinski]

Regarding the comments of David Prosser and Jan Velterop, I would note that for researchers working on health services or health systems research in a developing country, the purpose of publishing in an international journal can be twofold: 1) to solicit an international eye on what they are doing - feedback, consensus, validation etc. - which can help in subsequently using the research to establish new protocols and new administrative procedures in their local health systems, and 2) to score some academic brownie points.Let me stress that this is an observation only related to research covering health systems and health services, and that it implies a step beyond the ivory towers into the dizzying (to some academics) world of applying research results to real life - which is the main point of health systems/service research.You can publish anywhere of course - but will you be seen there by everyone whose opinions matter?Chris Zielinskich...@chriszielinski.comBlogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com Research publications: http://www.researchgate.netOn 25 April 2018 at 11:18 Velterop  wrote:  The thing is, Chris, that payments, be they APCs or subscription charges, are for the 'service' of publisher-mediated peer review (plus 'prestige ribbons') and access to publisher-mediated peer-reviewed (and 'ribboned') articles. They are not for publishing one's research results per se. That can be done at no cost or at very low, often negligible, cost. For instance via 'preprint' facilities or other repositories. I realise that for many a researcher having 'ribbons' pinned on their articles is important for career advancement and possibly also for reputation, but that is where the real problem lies. As long as the scholarly culture expects and demands publisher-mediated peer review and the 'prestige ribbons' associated with that, there will be a cost beyond the generally (very, or negligibly) low cost of just making one's articles publicly and freely available – open – to be reviewed, commented on, assessed, etc. by the community at large. The process of proper scientific discourse, in other words. That's where scicomm/scholcomm should be headed. I hope you agree.Best,Jan Jan Velteropvelte...@protonmail.comOn 25/04/2018 12:17, Chris Zielinski wrote: Richard,In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA discussion of this topic:-- Original Message --  To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All   Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33  Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)  In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review, redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the journal, charging for access to the paper version and pay-walling any online version. From the author's perspective, thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were cost barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly onerous in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries was good for authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for librarians and readers, who had to find the money to buy the content.Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the situation reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of cost-free online papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources to pay for publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that authors in developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the "Article Processing Charge" (APC).Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we assume that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be rather more likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones.Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized countries and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for papers. But the kind of health research that is essential in developing countries - health services and health systems research - is generally undertaken by local institutions and universities. This is a reason for serious concern, as the economic model of OA appears to be blocking the most important local research. I would add that this research needs to be published internationally, not just locally, in order to attract opinions, input and (in some cases) validation and consensus from the global health community.Many OA journals have special rates, flexibilities and waivers for writers from developing countries. It is also true that  about a quarter of the OA journals do not charge an APC at all - I presume 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Velterop]

The thing is, Chris, that payments, be they APCs or subscription 
charges, are for the 'service' of publisher-mediated peer review (plus 
'prestige ribbons') and access to publisher-mediated peer-reviewed (and 
'ribboned') articles. They are not for publishing one's research results 
per se. That can be done at no cost or at very low, often negligible, 
cost. For instance via 'preprint' facilities or other repositories. I 
realise that for many a researcher having 'ribbons' pinned on their 
articles is important for career advancement and possibly also for 
reputation, but that is where the real problem lies. As long as the 
scholarly culture expects and demands publisher-mediated peer review and 
the 'prestige ribbons' associated with that, there will be a cost beyond 
the generally (very, or negligibly) low cost of just making one's 
articles publicly and freely available – open – to be reviewed, 
commented on, assessed, etc. by the community at large. The process of 
proper scientific discourse, in other words. That's where 
scicomm/scholcomm should be headed. I hope you agree.


Best,

Jan


Jan Velterop

velte...@protonmail.com


On 25/04/2018 12:17, Chris Zielinski wrote:


Richard,

In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted 
to the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a 
HIFA discussion of this topic:


-- Original Message --
To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All 
Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33
Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)

In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country 
author wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper 
was good enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer 
review, redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and 
maybe even did some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then 
they published the journal, charging for access to the paper version 
and pay-walling any online version. From the author's perspective, 
thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were cost 
barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly 
onerous in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries 
was good for authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for 
librarians and readers, who had to find the money to buy the content.


Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the 
situation reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of 
cost-free online papers, while authors are scrambling to find the 
resources to pay for publication.From the commentary on this list it 
is clear that authors in developing countries are being restrained 
from publishing by the "Article Processing Charge" (APC).


Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that 
"we assume that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This 
seems to be rather more likely in industrialized countries than in 
developing ones.


Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized 
countries and supported by the sort of international funding that pays 
for papers. But the kind of health research that is essential in 
developing countries - health services and health systems research - 
is generally undertaken by local institutions and universities. This 
is a reason for serious concern, as the economic model of OA appears 
to be blocking the most important local research. I would add that 
this research needs to be published internationally, not just locally, 
in order to attract opinions, input and (in some cases) validation and 
consensus from the global health community.


Many OA journals have special rates, flexibilities and waivers for 
writers from developing countries. It is also true that about a 
quarter of the OA journals do not charge an APC at all - I presume 
they pay for their work by sales of their print editions in 
industrialized countries, thus enabling those in other countries free 
access to the online version.


Incidentally, this is not just an issue for developing country writers 
- I am a non-institutional writer in an industrialized country, 
writing papers which are not based on funded research, and it is a 
real hardship to find APC money to pay for my papers.


Best,

Chris


Chris Zielinski
ch...@chriszielinski.com
Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and 
http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com

Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net

On 25 April 2018 at 08:47 Richard Poynder 
 wrote:


To try and get a sense of how open access looks from different parts 
of the world, particularly as the strategy of engineering a global 
“flip” of subscription journals to a pay-to-publish gold OA model 
gains more traction, I am interested in talking to open access 
advocates in different parts of the world, ideally by means of 
matched interviews.


Earlier this month, for instance, I 

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[David Prosser]

As somebody who lives and works in the global north I can’t claim to have any 
particular insight into this issue, but I do wonder whether the way we treat 
access to content and access to publishing routes as symmetrical problems is 
helpful.

Say I am a reader and I want to have read a paper that is in a subscription 
journal.  If I don’t have a subscription then I do not have access and I am 
denied the possibility of reading that paper.  There is one main, official 
route to the paper and without a subscription that route is blocked.

(Although there may be alternative, routes - inter-library loan, contacting the 
author, using sites like Research Gate or Sci-Hub, or green versions in 
repositories.)

If I am an author and I want to disseminate my work what are my options?  It 
may be that a specific journal is closed to me through a high APC (assuming 
that there are no waivers or discounts), but I can still disseminate the 
research - possibly through non-APC gold journals, possibly through 
institutional repositories.

This is why I wonder if the problems are symmetrical.  There is one (official) 
route to read non-OA papers - subscriptions.  But there are many routes to 
disseminate a paper, not just APC-gold.  I realise that this is a problem if 
one’s funder is rewarding publication in specific high-APC charging journals, 
but that is a reward problem, not an open access problems (although a problem 
nevertheless).  For those communities that have decided not to play the 
high-impact factor game there are great opportunities to gain the benefits of 
open access without the problems of APCs - SciELO being a great example.

David


On 25 Apr 2018, at 11:17, Chris Zielinski 
> wrote:


Richard,

In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to the 
Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA discussion 
of this topic:

-- Original Message --
To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All 
>
Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33
Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)


In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author wrote 
a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good enough, the 
generous people at the journal organized peer review, redid/redesigned the 
tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did some language editing - at 
no cost to the author. Then they published the journal, charging for access to 
the paper version and pay-walling any online version. From the author's 
perspective, thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were 
cost barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly onerous 
in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries was good for 
authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for librarians and readers, 
who had to find the money to buy the content.

Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the situation 
reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of cost-free online 
papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources to pay for 
publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that authors in 
developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the "Article 
Processing Charge" (APC).

Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we assume 
that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be rather more 
likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones.

Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized countries 
and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for papers. But 
the kind of health research that is essential in developing countries - health 
services and health systems research - is generally undertaken by local 
institutions and universities. This is a reason for serious concern, as the 
economic model of OA appears to be blocking the most important local research. 
I would add that this research needs to be published internationally, not just 
locally, in order to attract opinions, input and (in some cases) validation and 
consensus from the global health community.

Many OA journals have special rates, flexibilities and waivers for writers from 
developing countries. It is also true that  about a quarter of the OA journals 
do not charge an APC at all - I presume they pay for their work by sales of 
their print editions in industrialized countries, thus enabling those in other 
countries free access to the online version.

Incidentally, this is not just an issue for developing country writers - I am a 
non-institutional writer in an industrialized country, writing papers which are 
not based on funded research, and it is a real hardship to find APC money to 
pay for my papers.

Best,

Chris


Chris Zielinski

Re: [GOAL] North, South, and Open Access: The view from Egypt with Mahmoud Khalifa

[Chris Zielinski]

Richard,In this context, you may be interested in a post I recently submitted to the Healthcare Information for All (HIFA) list in the context of a HIFA discussion of this topic:-- Original Message -- To: HIFA - Healthcare Information For All  Date: 18 April 2018 at 19:33 Subject: Re: [hifa] Open Access Author Processing Charges (3)  In the bad old days before Open Access (OA), a developing country author wrote a paper and submitted it to a journal and, if the paper was good enough, the generous people at the journal organized peer review, redid/redesigned the tables and most of the graphics, and maybe even did some language editing - at no cost to the author. Then they published the journal, charging for access to the paper version and pay-walling any online version. From the author's perspective, thus, there was no barrier to publication, although there were cost barriers to reading the paper subsequently, which was particularly onerous in poorer countries. So the situation in developing countries was good for authors - who simply had to write well - and bad for librarians and readers, who had to find the money to buy the content.Now that Open Access is making serious inroads, we are finding the situation reversed - librarians and readers bask in an avalanche of cost-free online papers, while authors are scrambling to find the resources to pay for publication.From the commentary on this list it is clear that authors in developing countries are being restrained from publishing by the "Article Processing Charge" (APC).Zoe Mullan, Editor of The Lancet Global Health makes the point that "we assume that this cost will be borne by the funding body". This seems to be rather more likely in industrialized countries than in developing ones.Basic research is much more frequently carried out in industrialized countries and supported by the sort of international funding that pays for papers. But the kind of health research that is essential in developing countries - health services and health systems research - is generally undertaken by local institutions and universities. This is a reason for serious concern, as the economic model of OA appears to be blocking the most important local research. I would add that this research needs to be published internationally, not just locally, in order to attract opinions, input and (in some cases) validation and consensus from the global health community.Many OA journals have special rates, flexibilities and waivers for writers from developing countries. It is also true that  about a quarter of the OA journals do not charge an APC at all - I presume they pay for their work by sales of their print editions in industrialized countries, thus enabling those in other countries free access to the online version.Incidentally, this is not just an issue for developing country writers - I am a non-institutional writer in an industrialized country, writing papers which are not based on funded research, and it is a real hardship to find APC money to pay for my papers.Best,ChrisChris Zielinskich...@chriszielinski.comBlogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com Research publications: http://www.researchgate.netOn 25 April 2018 at 08:47 Richard Poynder  wrote:  To try and get a sense of how open access looks from different parts of the world, particularly as the strategy of engineering a global “flip” of subscription journals to a pay-to-publish gold OA model gains more traction, I am interested in talking to open access advocates in different parts of the world, ideally by means of matched interviews. Earlier this month, for instance, I published a Q with Jeff MacKie-Mason, UC Berkeley’s University Librarian and Chief Digital Scholarship Officer. (https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from.html). Yesterday, I published a matched Q covering the same themes with Mahmoud Khalifa, a librarian at the Library of Congress Cairo Office, and DOAJ Ambassador for the Middle East and Persian Gulf. This interview can be read here: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-view-from_24.html I have also been asking those I interview to comment on the answers given by their matched interviewee. Mahmoud Khalifa’s response to the MacKie-Mason Q is incorporated in this post: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/north-south-and-open-access-mahmoud.html I am open to suggestions for further matched interviews. Richard Poynder  ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal  
 
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