10 thoughts on “I got one of these letters once and was so irritated that I wrote back to the journal withdrawing my paper”
Is this a case of asking the authors to pay a lump sum which represents some expected return on the paper if it were not open access? “Sure, you can publish open access so long as you give us the money we’re losing”.
The fees for open-access publication are certainly a pain for academics, especially those without access to large research budgets. But for many journals (including the one mentioned in the link) open-access is an option, not a requirement. Most open-access publishes also offer the option of discounted fees for researchers who are unable to afford the costs of publication.
I am surprised that you would immediately withdraw your paper because a journal offered you the option of open-access. In general, I think open access is a good thing for the research community. Research should be freely available to all researchers and the public. Most of the top journals are not open access – their articles are behind paywalls and often cost as much as $30 a piece to read. Academics at research institutions with large budgets don’t notice this problem, because libraries pay the subscription fees to these journals. But these fees can be a substantial barrier to research for individuals at smaller institutions or in developing countries.
Obviously it costs money to publish journals (paying editors and typesetters, maintaing servers, etc.); even the ArXiv requires budget support (http://arxiv.org/help/support). But one idea we proposed is that libraries could stop paying the subscription fees for journals that keep articles behind firewalls. Instead, they could join together and pay the publication costs to make all research open-access and shift the monetary burden from researchers (http://simplystatistics.tumblr.com/post/12286350206/free-access-publishing-is-awesome-but-expensive-how).
Jeff:
Open access is a good thing, so much so that I’d prefer to post a paper on my website for open access, rather than publish it in a journal that nobody reads and pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of then posting my article that I wrote on my own website.
Andrew
Don’t you think that this is a bit unsustainable though? Its great for people who have already developed a reputation in the field; people will come to your website to find your papers. But for new academics, journals are still the filter through which people find papers.
Jeff:
Yes, I see what you mean. But I don’t feel I was under any obligation to either pay thousands of $ to these dudes.
In reply to Shaun: it should be clarified that paying the publication fee of the PLoS journals is optional, so if you haven’t funding from grants or your employer to pay for it, you can still publish there.
To Alex: It’s true that PLoS will waive fees for those that can’t afford them, but that doesn’t make the fees optional. Just to clarify, I think that paying PLoS ~$2000 to cover publication fees is much more preferable to paying a for-profit publisher the same fee to make your article open-access, as the latter can still make additional money from your article via advertising.
Well, there is conference spam around for many years now. It is only a natural step to go into the publication business as well; especially as academic careers seem to depend so strongly on getting enough paper out … Chances are high that you find some desperate Post Doc to pay the money.
I am all for (sensible, community-reviewed) page charges: It moves costs from libraries to authors. In my business (astronomy), all the american journals charge page charges, and the economist in me says: If authors are the principal beneficiaries of their publications, then they should pay (at least part of) the costs. And I think I *am* the main beneficiary of the journal publication; after all, the manuscript is always already out on arXiv.org, so the community already “knows” the content.
Is this a case of asking the authors to pay a lump sum which represents some expected return on the paper if it were not open access? “Sure, you can publish open access so long as you give us the money we’re losing”.
The fees for open-access publication are certainly a pain for academics, especially those without access to large research budgets. But for many journals (including the one mentioned in the link) open-access is an option, not a requirement. Most open-access publishes also offer the option of discounted fees for researchers who are unable to afford the costs of publication.
I am surprised that you would immediately withdraw your paper because a journal offered you the option of open-access. In general, I think open access is a good thing for the research community. Research should be freely available to all researchers and the public. Most of the top journals are not open access – their articles are behind paywalls and often cost as much as $30 a piece to read. Academics at research institutions with large budgets don’t notice this problem, because libraries pay the subscription fees to these journals. But these fees can be a substantial barrier to research for individuals at smaller institutions or in developing countries.
Obviously it costs money to publish journals (paying editors and typesetters, maintaing servers, etc.); even the ArXiv requires budget support (http://arxiv.org/help/support). But one idea we proposed is that libraries could stop paying the subscription fees for journals that keep articles behind firewalls. Instead, they could join together and pay the publication costs to make all research open-access and shift the monetary burden from researchers (http://simplystatistics.tumblr.com/post/12286350206/free-access-publishing-is-awesome-but-expensive-how).
Jeff:
Open access is a good thing, so much so that I’d prefer to post a paper on my website for open access, rather than publish it in a journal that nobody reads and pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of then posting my article that I wrote on my own website.
Andrew
Don’t you think that this is a bit unsustainable though? Its great for people who have already developed a reputation in the field; people will come to your website to find your papers. But for new academics, journals are still the filter through which people find papers.
Jeff:
Yes, I see what you mean. But I don’t feel I was under any obligation to either pay thousands of $ to these dudes.
Just to expand on Jeff’s point, what do you think about the fees charged by non-profit open-access publishers such as PLoS?
http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/#pubquesthttp://www.plos.org/about/faq.html
Still too high, or does their mission to change the model of scientific publication justify their costs?
In reply to Shaun: it should be clarified that paying the publication fee of the PLoS journals is optional, so if you haven’t funding from grants or your employer to pay for it, you can still publish there.
To Alex: It’s true that PLoS will waive fees for those that can’t afford them, but that doesn’t make the fees optional. Just to clarify, I think that paying PLoS ~$2000 to cover publication fees is much more preferable to paying a for-profit publisher the same fee to make your article open-access, as the latter can still make additional money from your article via advertising.
Well, there is conference spam around for many years now. It is only a natural step to go into the publication business as well; especially as academic careers seem to depend so strongly on getting enough paper out … Chances are high that you find some desperate Post Doc to pay the money.
I am all for (sensible, community-reviewed) page charges: It moves costs from libraries to authors. In my business (astronomy), all the american journals charge page charges, and the economist in me says: If authors are the principal beneficiaries of their publications, then they should pay (at least part of) the costs. And I think I *am* the main beneficiary of the journal publication; after all, the manuscript is always already out on arXiv.org, so the community already “knows” the content.