The recently discussed scenario of universal gold open access brought about by simply switching the subscriptions funds at libraries to have the libraries pay for author processing charges instead, seemed like a ghoulish nightmare. One of the few scenarios worse than the desolate state we call the status quo today.
Lately, there has been some public dreaming going on about how one could just switch to open access publishing by converting subscription funds to author processing charges (APCs) and we’d have universal open access and the whole world would rejoice. Given that current average APCs have been found to be somewhat lower than current subscription costs (approx.
[I am using the term “megajournal” here to mean “journal that practices PLOS ONE -style peer-review for correctness only, ignoring guesses at possible impact”. It’s not a great term for this class of journals, but it seems to be becoming established as the default.] Bo-Christer Björk’s (2015) new paper in PeerJ asks the question “Have the “mega-journals” reached the limits to growth?”, and suggests that the answer may be yes.
Provoked by Mike Eisen’s post today, The inevitable failure of parasitic green open access, I want to briefly lay out the possible futures of scholarly publishing as I see them.
Somehow this seems to have slipped under the radar: National Science Foundation announces plan for comprehensive public access to research results. They put it up on 18 March, two whole months ago, so our apologies for not having said anything until now! This is the NSF’s rather belated response to the OSTP memo on Open Access, back in January 2013.
Matt drew my attention to an old paper I’d not seen before: Riggs (1903) on the vertebral column of Brontosaurus . The page I linked there shows only the first page (which in fact is half a page, since Riggs’ work is only in the right column). Why only the first page? As Matt put it, “It’s been 110 years, just give us the PDF already.
April Clyburne-Sherin asked an interesting question on the OpenCon Discussion List recently: Comment: Quite rightly, April does not trust the publisher to make the published work fully open access in perpetuity, and wants to do more as an author, with the publishing agreement (a formal contract) to ensure that the publisher will actually provide the exact services she wants.
I've put off writing this post about the Bouchout Declaration for a number of reasons. I attended the meeting that launched the declaration last year, and from my perspective that was a frustrating meeting.
Roughly ten days after I first blogged about this (see: Springer caught red-handed selling access to an Open Access article), Springer have now made a curious public statement acknowledging this debacle: Statement on Annals of Forest Science article Berlin, 6 May 2015 A number of tweets posted by Prof.
Open Access (OA) pioneer and OA journal eLife founding member and sponsor, the Max Planck Society just released a white paper (PDF) analyzing open access costs in various countries and institutions and comparing them to subscription costs. Such studies are fundamental prerequisites for evidence-based policies and informed decisions on how to proceed with bitterly needed reforms.