Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing

From: Fytton Rowland <J.F.Rowland_at_LBORO.AC.UK>
Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 10:04:30 -0000

The differing fees ($500 versus $1500) have to do with rejection rates,
since only accepted papers pay the fee. Rejected papers incur costs. The
figure of about $500 per paper being adequate to cover costs depends on a
rejection rate of about 50%. A rejection rate of about 80% would require a
fee of about $1500.

An alternative approach would be to charge the fee to all submissions. It
need only be about $250 then, but those whose papers are rejected get
nothing for their $250. This method would encourage authors to be very
realistic in their choice of journal to submit to, though. As far as I know
no journal has tried this approach yet.

Fytton Rowland, Loughboroughb University, UK.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Krichel" <krichel_at_OPENLIB.ORG>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 8:45 PM
Subject: Re: New channel of support for open-access publishing


> Stevan Harnad writes
> > On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Thomas Krichel wrote:
> >
> > > $1500 per paper should be amply sufficient to fund the
> > > publishing operation. I suggest that libraries support other
> > > ventures with more moderate charges.
> >
> > Thomas, did you mean $500 ? Otherwise your posting does not quite
> > make sense. (PLoS is proposing $1500.)
>
> Yes, that is what I meant: $1500 should be amply sufficient.
> Institutions should not be handing more money to PLoS.
>
> > If you meant $500 I remind you that PLoS is aiming explicitly for the
> > high (quality, impact, prestige) end of science publishing (the level
> > of Nature and Science) on the assumption that if the high end can be
> > won over to OA journals, the rest will follow suit.
>
> By the same token, do you sincerely want to suggest that the competitors
of
> PLoS who charge more reasonable fees are intending to attract
> low-quality papers? Surely not! They just not as greedy as PLoS.
>
> It costs as much to publish quality intellectual contents as it cost
> to publish rubbish intellectual contents. Sure, if you have complicate
> multi-media contents, then your costs are likely to be higher. But most
> of the documents we are talking here about are, presumably, the
> traditional stuff of text, mathematical formulas and pictures that
> academic authors are trained to produce. To produce good multi-media
> is a different story, it is likely to be the preserve of trade authors.
>
> > $1500 may well cover extra enhancements that make the transition at the
> > high end more appealing to authors at this time.
>
> PLoS can use the 9 Million subsidy that they already have received
> for that transition. Institutional monies will better spent on
> institutional archiving, or participation in discipline based
> initiatives such as arXiv.org, RePEc, or rclis.org.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Thomas Krichel mailto:krichel_at_openlib.org
> http://openlib.org/home/krichel
> RePEc:per:1965-06-05:thomas_krichel
>
Received on Thu Jan 15 2004 - 10:04:30 GMT

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