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Sara Hanson Post 1

• 22 October 2019, 9:17 PM

Costs of Open Access

One barrier that I have encountered in open access publishing are the increased publication costs. Publishing with open access journals (such as PLoS), or paying for the open access option for a journal can be prohibitively expensive for a researcher. The cost difference between those options and publishing behind a paywall can be several thousand dollars. For research groups at smaller institutions that doesn't have substantial external funding, this can be a difficult challenge to overcome. 

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Beatrice Gini Post 2 in reply to 1

• 23 October 2019, 1:26 PM

I completely agree, Sara, the Article Processing Charge model does not seem like a good way forward. For one thing, it just moves the inequality: now everyone can read the articles, but only researchers from 'rich' institutions or countries can publish. Especially when we consider that there were at least some ways around the paywall (like requesting copies), APCs seem even worse than paywalls. In addition, this new model moves the incentives for publishers, from producing a small number of high quality articles to producing large number of articles quickly. It's true that there are excellent quality-control measures currently in place in open access journals, but I worry that these may become diluted over time...

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James Mwamodenyi Post 3 in reply to 2

• 26 October 2019, 2:05 PM

These are very pertinent issues you raised. The issue of maintaining quality versus cost. Am sure the publishers have costs that must be catered for and I think its also a challenge for them in providing free access and also meet the costs.

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Ben Libberton Post 4 in reply to 1

• 1 November 2019, 5:54 PM

Agree, this has been an issue for groups that I've worked with in the past.