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Generally this sounds like good progress! >Under the agreement, all articles with a UC corresponding author published in more than 2,700 of Springer Nature’s j

by kken 6y ago

Generally this sounds like good progress! >Under the agreement, all articles with a UC corresponding author published in more than 2,700 of Springer Nature’s journals will be open access by default, with the UC Libraries paying a portion of the open access fee on behalf of all authors. Authors without available research funds for the remainder of the publishing fee can request that the Library cover the entire amount. Authors may also choose to opt out of open access publishing if they wish. However, this seems to be severely limiting. So basically all research projects have to redirect funds to cover part of the "open access fees" or they have the dubious option to "opt out". The library only being willing to pay on case-by-case base means that there will be hidden disincentives in place. Essentially that means that projects that are not willing to pay money to SpringerNature will be at a disadvantage. I wonder which mechanisms were implemented to prevent them from arbitrarily increasing open access fees? This is conspicuously absent from the article.

squarecog 6y ago
> So basically all research projects have to redirect funds to cover part of the "open access fees" Yes, the cost of publishing results, as well as review, editing, etc, should be incorporated into the research budget (researchers can of course choose other means of sharing their findings than through publication). In an open access model, the publishing costs are offset by money saved in not paying for access to other articles the research project needs. I would hope that opting out means that projects have to pay fees on articles they'd otherwise get for free through this agreement, rather than riding on everyone else doing their bit. One would imagine the fee schedule is set in the agreement UCB reached with Springer (presumably the agreement will be published at some point...)

by kken 6y ago

squarecog 6y ago

> So basically all research projects have to redirect funds to cover part of the "open access fees" Yes, the cost of publishing results, as well as review, editing, etc, should be incorporated into the research budget (researchers can of course choose other means of sharing their findings than through publication). In an open access model, the publishing costs are offset by money saved in not paying for access to other articles the research project needs. I would hope that opting out means that projects have to pay fees on articles they'd otherwise get for free through this agreement, rather than riding on everyone else doing their bit. One would imagine the fee schedule is set in the agreement UCB reached with Springer (presumably the agreement will be published at some point...)