6 ms·

What will you do when your PI refuses to pay for open access on a publication?

rflrob 14y ago
Or when your not-yet-tenured PI thinks you have something really exciting, and wants to publish in $(BIG_NAME_JOURNAL) to improve her tenure prospects? To be fair, the OP is in a Communications and Journalism grad program, so there may not be a PI equivalent role. However, my impression is that most academic publishing by volume is in the sciences, where there is such a model.
- tibbon 14y ago
  It would seem to me that there's little reason that there can't be a high impact factor, well respected journal, that is also open in its publication. Yes, there need to be people working to format articles, review papers, etc... but as we've seen in the FOSS community, there are alternative ways of making money, using modern technology to assist in reducing costs (printing paper? seems wasteful, expensive and silly). Also, most of these higher impact journals charge significant fees to the authors to publish openly with them. $5000 for Nature. Sure, that's a lot of money- but I'd to imagine people would still send papers to Nature even if they made that the requirement for all their papers. Also- is high of a fee really needed? I mean there are costs, sure.. but it seems to push people away from open publication, not toward it.
  - pyre 14y ago
    As it stands, a lot of the peer-reviewed for-profit/pay-only journals basically get the reviewers to review the submitted papers for free. There are obviously some number of employees, but as it stands, they already get a ton of 'free' work done for them (so far as I understand it).
    - streptomycin 14y ago
      That's the same with open access journals too, though. The difference is, who pays the costs the publishers face? Traditional publishers are funded by subscriptions. Open access publishers are funded by charging authors big fees to publish in their journals.
      - pyre 14y ago
        I was just clarifying that not all of the work that goes into the journal is a cost for paid-for journals. I'm not claiming that there are no costs.
      - michael_nielsen 14y ago
        Only some open access publishers work that way. Some charge no fees. Some --- including the best known open access publisher, the Public Library of Science --- will waive their fee upon request. I am told by people who've used the waiver that it went ahead with no questions asked; they simply indicated that they were not in a position to pay.
        streptomycin 14y ago
        Who charges no fees? How do they survive? And PLOS will waive their fee, but in practice that's rare. If all the people currently paying little/nothing to submit to non-open access journals instead submitted to PLOS and waived the fee, PLOS would be fucked and they'd have to change their policy. After all, they have to pay a lot of salaries: http://www.plos.org/about/people/staff/ http://www.plos.org/about/people/staff/
        tibbon 14y ago
        The concept of PLOS waiving the fee is interesting to me- as it establishes a bit of a "pay what you want" thing on an institutional level. There are lots of examples of various people in other fields (music, indie video games, restaurants, etc) charging a 'pay what you can' strategy. But not many institutional ones.
        michael_nielsen 14y ago
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    is [that] high of a fee really needed? Possibly. Here's a table of costs for different publishers http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.h... but keep in mind that it is way more expensive to run a highly selective journal like Nature because they reject the vast majority of papers that get submitted.

Or when your not-yet-tenured PI thinks you have something really exciting, and wants to publish in $(BIG_NAME_JOURNAL) to improve her tenure prospects? To be fair, the OP is in a Communications and Journalism grad program, so there may not be a PI equivalent role. However, my impression is that most academic publishing by volume is in the sciences, where there is such a model.

tibbon 14y ago
It would seem to me that there's little reason that there can't be a high impact factor, well respected journal, that is also open in its publication. Yes, there need to be people working to format articles, review papers, etc... but as we've seen in the FOSS community, there are alternative ways of making money, using modern technology to assist in reducing costs (printing paper? seems wasteful, expensive and silly). Also, most of these higher impact journals charge significant fees to the authors to publish openly with them. $5000 for Nature. Sure, that's a lot of money- but I'd to imagine people would still send papers to Nature even if they made that the requirement for all their papers. Also- is high of a fee really needed? I mean there are costs, sure.. but it seems to push people away from open publication, not toward it.
- pyre 14y ago
  As it stands, a lot of the peer-reviewed for-profit/pay-only journals basically get the reviewers to review the submitted papers for free. There are obviously some number of employees, but as it stands, they already get a ton of 'free' work done for them (so far as I understand it).
  - streptomycin 14y ago
    That's the same with open access journals too, though. The difference is, who pays the costs the publishers face? Traditional publishers are funded by subscriptions. Open access publishers are funded by charging authors big fees to publish in their journals.
    - pyre 14y ago
      I was just clarifying that not all of the work that goes into the journal is a cost for paid-for journals. I'm not claiming that there are no costs.
    - michael_nielsen 14y ago
      Only some open access publishers work that way. Some charge no fees. Some --- including the best known open access publisher, the Public Library of Science --- will waive their fee upon request. I am told by people who've used the waiver that it went ahead with no questions asked; they simply indicated that they were not in a position to pay.
      - streptomycin 14y ago
        Who charges no fees? How do they survive? And PLOS will waive their fee, but in practice that's rare. If all the people currently paying little/nothing to submit to non-open access journals instead submitted to PLOS and waived the fee, PLOS would be fucked and they'd have to change their policy. After all, they have to pay a lot of salaries: http://www.plos.org/about/people/staff/ http://www.plos.org/about/people/staff/
        tibbon 14y ago
        The concept of PLOS waiving the fee is interesting to me- as it establishes a bit of a "pay what you want" thing on an institutional level. There are lots of examples of various people in other fields (music, indie video games, restaurants, etc) charging a 'pay what you can' strategy. But not many institutional ones.
        michael_nielsen 14y ago
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- streptomycin 14y ago
  is [that] high of a fee really needed? Possibly. Here's a table of costs for different publishers http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.html http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/scholarlycommunication/oa_fees.h... but keep in mind that it is way more expensive to run a highly selective journal like Nature because they reject the vast majority of papers that get submitted.