[
]1Academic publishing
is a complete scam. Many people are aware of the cost to access journal
articles (usually ~£20 for a paper), the writing of which is often
funded via the public (through research grants, general university
funding, fees, etc.). What people are less aware of is: 1. Many
universities are currently ‘double paying’ by paying for articles in
closed access journals to be made open access, but still having to pay
the subscription for those journals (and certainly last year, [open
access articles were still being ‘sold’ and marked ‘all rights
reserved’]2 by some publishers) 2. [Huge costs]3 (note nuance
in that link though) for making articles open access (and [recent
changes to ‘green access’ seem to have created prohibitive embargo
periods]4 on that route) 3. Massive costs for many edited books –
I’m looking at you Springer – where you’re looking at ~£80-£150 average
(I’ve seen these go up to £3000), with £20-30 chapter costs, for a book
that is: 1. Written for free by authors (often using public funding) 2.
Curated/edited for free by academic editors 3. Reviewed for free by
academic reviewers 4. Edited with minimal support – publishers are,
quite rightly using templates and formatting tools to encourage
authors to pre-format their work, but then using editorial cost as a
justification for purchase cost 5. Not included in institutional
packages, so they need to be bought separately 4. One I hadn’t quite
realised was the ridiculous costs some publishers charge for any reuse
of material (I’ve been quoted £1200 for using a single image in my
thesis, needless to say I’ll do without). This is particularly irksome
for figures which unlike text can’t just be quoted. This is particularly
problematic where figures actually form the basis of a model, and really
need to be reused to illustrate that model. I suspect many authors
are unaware of this and would not wish to restrict such reuse of their
graphical illustrations. EURGH, low cost open access now please… *
[jisc open access resources]5 * [Report of the Working Group on
Expanding Access to Published Research Findings – the Finch Group]6
- [Open Knowledge Open Access Working Group]7
Footnotes
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/static/2015/05/open_access_storefront.jpg ↩
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http://svpow.com/2014/03/11/how-is-it-possible-that-elsevier-are-still-charging-for-copies-of-open-access-articles/ ↩
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http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/12/19/taylor-cost-publish-gold-open-access/ ↩
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https://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/elsevier-sharing-policy-criticised-over-its-open-access-credentials/2020406.article ↩