[BOAI] Re: Submission fees in journals

[Jean-Claude Guédon]

I do not know what the results of this study will be, but right off the
bat, I can say that this is a beautiful way to keep scientists from poor
countries from trying to publish in these journals. Is this what the OA
movement wants. And are we going to implement more exception rules for
poor countries that are read as further examples of humiliation and
discrimination?

The fallacy behind all of this quest for income is the concept of
sustainability which implies some kind of commercial stability. This, in
turn, rests on the premise that scientific journals are commercial
entities. But why should it be so? Why not talk instead in terms of
viability, and viability can easily include governmental help. After
all, scientific research could not work without governmental help. Does
this mean that scientific research should be deemed unsustainable?

In the OA community, we are all convinced that publishing is an integral
part of the research cycle.
We also know that much of research is funded in one way or another by
public money
Finally, we know that the cost of publishing is a small fraction of
research and would be even smaller if profits disappeared from the
system

So, why don,t we push for a support of research by governments that is
coherent, that is to say that includes the publishing part of the
research cycle.

The best model for this is SciELO. Moreover, if you study scholarly and
scientific publishing everywhere, you will see that the number of
countries where government support for publishing does not exist is
actually quite small.

If several governments are involved, stability will be strengthened, and
editorial autonomy ensured.

is this not what we really want.

Jean-Claude Guédon



Le lundi 16 novembre 2009 à 08:56 -0500, Peter Suber a écrit :

> [Forwarding from Mark Ware.  --Peter Suber.]
> 
> 
> 
> Dear List
> 
> I've been commissioned by Knowledge Exchange
> (www.knowledge-exchange.info), a partnership of JISC (UK), SURF
> (Netherlands), DEFF (Denmark) and DfG (Germany), to do a study into
> the feasibility of submission fees in open access journals (i.e. as
> distinct from publication fees charged after acceptance). I've written
> a short description of the project on my blog here:
> http://mrkwr.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/open-access-submission-fees/
> 
> At this stage I would like to make contact with journals or publishers
> (whether OA or otherwise) with any history of charging submission
> fees, with a view to learning from their experience. If anyone on the
> list has such experience they would be willing to share with this
> project, do please contact me in the first instance via email at
> mark at markwareconsulting.com.
> 
> Regards,
>  -Mark Ware
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> mark at markwareconsulting.com
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> 
> 
> 
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