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Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

news.sciencemag.org

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Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#21

Post by alttag »

markbao wrote: post #17
p4bl0 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where the remaining problem is. Funding agencies should really stop kneeling in front of publishers and refuse to pay for this, or at least fix themselves a maximum price per publication. Currently publishers ask for $1000 to $5000 in some cases, which is completely insane. I'm not denying the cost of publication. But there is that actual cost, and then there is the prices demanded by publishers, which looks m…

Even more insane when you consider that peer reviewers are unpaid.

So is content editing, in many disciplines.

I believe copyediting and layout is paid, however.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#22

Post by eli »

jonknee wrote: post #7

Bravo. It would be really neat if the US Government could get on the same bandwagon. Our tax dollars being used to fund research that we can't access is insane.

Isn't that what this is http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ ?

"The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication."

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#23

Post by dang »

philip1209 wrote: post #2

> "The Gates Foundation will also pay the author fees charged by many open-access journals."

It's surprising what a big deal "author fees" are. A historian told me recently that when submitting articles to one major journal, there's a checkbox saying "I want this work to be in the public domain". If you select it, the system automatically adds $5,432 to your bill. That wasn't the exact number, but it was about $5k. In his field, and surely for most academics, that's prohibitive, and an odd way to treat people who are already effectively giving their work away. Yes, journal economics and so on, etc., but something's got to give here.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#24

Post by hackuser »

p4bl0 wrote: post #13
philip1209 wrote: post #2

> "The Gates Foundation will also pay the author fees charged by many open-access journals."

That's where the remaining problem is. Funding agencies should really stop kneeling in front of publishers and refuse to pay for this, or at least fix themselves a maximum price per publication. Currently publishers ask for $1000 to $5000 in some cases, which is completely insane. I'm not denying the cost of publication. But there is that actual cost, and then there is the prices demanded by publishers, which looks m…

> Currently publishers ask for $1000 to $5000 in some cases, which is completely insane.

How many articles do they publish per month and what are their costs?

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#25

Post by kenshaw »

Is it not possible to create a separate foundation / organization that manages peer-reviewed, open-access journals for multiple scientific fields? I realize the costs involved in asking academics to review submissions, etc., but couldn't a small $10-$15 million grant for an organization be enough to kickstart an open journal consortium? Even if they did require small review fees from submissions ($25-$50), I feel that with proper management, and digital distribution, that a project like this could 'disrupt' conventional journals.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#26

Post by dougmccune »

markbao wrote: post #15

This is really great, but to play devil's advocate, does this hurt the authors? That is, does this mean that they can't publish in Cell or another reputable journal, and would this discourage them from taking funding from the Gates Foundation? As an article in The Winnower said, science is not disinterested and there are egos involved. "We got published in Cell " or "Our paper is in Science " still speaks prestige.

Almost all publishers and journals have adopted a "hybrid" model, where you can publish in a paywall journal but pay a fee to have your particular article made available OA. I think if you want to publish in Cell and get your article OA all you have to do is pay $5k.

At Sage our OA fees for hybrid journals range a lot, but are typically either $1,500 or $3,000 (source: http://www.uk.sagepub.com/repository/binaries/pdf/SAGE-Choic...). The more prestigious the journal the more the fee is typically. Also, high fees are common in hard sciences (where everything is grant funded, like from Gates, NIH, etc) but the fees are typically much lower in social sciences and humanities where there aren't typically publication fees built into research grants. I don't think we (Sage) publish anything that can command the $5k like Cell and Nature, which is basically the price point where OA fees top out.

So the authors will still want the prestige of the top-tier journals (at least while hiring decisions are still made with that metric), and one byproduct of mandates like these is more APCs flowing to the big publishers.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#27

Post by kd0amg »

markbao wrote: post #15

This is really great, but to play devil's advocate, does this hurt the authors? That is, does this mean that they can't publish in Cell or another reputable journal, and would this discourage them from taking funding from the Gates Foundation? As an article in The Winnower said, science is not disinterested and there are egos involved. "We got published in Cell " or "Our paper is in Science " still speaks prestige.

It might just mean that they publish in the same places and just check a box that says "our funding agency mandates open access" when filling out the copyright license/transfer paperwork.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#28

Post by comex »

eli wrote: post #22
jonknee wrote: post #7

Bravo. It would be really neat if the US Government could get on the same bandwagon. Our tax dollars being used to fund research that we can't access is insane.

Isn't that what this is http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ ? "The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication."

The detail link elaborates:

> to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication

This new policy removes the 12 month embargo.

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#29

Post by [deleted] »

eli wrote: post #22
jonknee wrote: post #7

Bravo. It would be really neat if the US Government could get on the same bandwagon. Our tax dollars being used to fund research that we can't access is insane.

Isn't that what this is http://publicaccess.nih.gov/ ? "The NIH public access policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central immediately upon acceptance for publication."

[deleted]

Re: Gates Foundation to require immediate free access for journal articles

#30

Post by toby »

kenshaw wrote: post #25

Is it not possible to create a separate foundation / organization that manages peer-reviewed, open-access journals for multiple scientific fields? I realize the costs involved in asking academics to review submissions, etc., but couldn't a small $10-$15 million grant for an organization be enough to kickstart an open journal consortium? Even if they did require small review fees from submissions ($25-$50), I feel tha…

Is this what you mean? http://www.plos.org/

The current system rewards people who publish in the high-impact journals, which means they get the "coolest" papers, which means they remain high impact. The ones at the top now are not generally open access.

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