My recent activity into Open Access practice is motivated by making sure that things are done properly rather than a desire to bash publishers or campaign against lower prices. I’m not an expert here – I don’t know what the cost of OA is and I don’t know what a reasonable price is – but I am fairly sure that most funders are not getting what they think they are in OA.
I was contacted yesterday by someone who runs a voluntary disease group. (They may post in a few days – until then I shan’t say whom). They wrote “So, your blog entry was extremely useful here and I wanted to thank you.” Well thanks in return. And I was pointed to the following blog and comment which shows that people need this information:

Plog – Paul Wicks‘ blog

Paul Wicks blog = plog. I’m a postdoc at King’s College London, a research psychologist by training. I’m also involved in the National Research Staff Assocation, run a magazine called GRAD Britain for PhD students, and work for a “Web 2.0” company.

• Is Publisher-lead “open access” a swindle?

  Date:

  Saturday, 14 Jul y 2007 – 13:53 GMT

  I was alerted to this post by a patient advocate I know via PatientsLikeMe. The short version is that some of the articles have clearly been paid for to be open-access ($900 USD), but when you look at a recent copy of the journal you are prompted to enter a user-name and password as if you were paying for the article like normal, and in fact the buttons to pay for it remain there.
  It’s a similar case for a journal run by the American Chemical Society.
  Is this part of a wider problem? Petermr’s blog would certainly suggest so. He’s very involved in the open-access movement and is even starting to grade the different publishers on their clarity and accessibility.
  This is particularly relevant for me at the moment as I just got something published in a Blackwell journal and was considering paying a £1,300 fee to make it open access. In actual fact I think I can archive the pre-review version for free with my institutional archive, which is handy as I don’t exactly have £1,300 stuffed into my desk drawers in £20 bills…
  Anyway. The current state of affairs seems to be this: publishers are worried about OA and have cobbled together business models that support generating revenue in other ways that the typical subscriber model. However, they don’t appear to have put much thought in to the publishing model.

PMR: and 1 comment:

Jennifer Rohn said:

The two dedicated open-access publishers (BioMed Central and Public Library of Science) don’t have these problems. People who want to ensure their articles are truly going to be open access, published by companies who have put real thought into the publishing as well as business model, might want to look there.

PMR:  Thanks Jennifer :

I am a post-doctoral cell biologist at University College London, having just returned to science after a four-year sabbatical as a journal editor. In my spare time, I am also a freelance science writer, editor and journalist; novelist; biotechnology consultant and the founder and editor of LabLit.com magazine. You can find me at most London sci/art/culture/lit events!

PMR: I hope that as we in the Blue Obelisk do our studies it will become objectively clear which author-pays publishers are truly open access and which are not really trying. We’ll let the facts speak.