[Taxacom] Fwd: Fwd: open access

[Daniel Mietchen]

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:
> $US500 for one paper is not a fee waiver, it's a lot of money for a
> biologist in a in a level 2 country.
Yes, but this $US500 sum at PLOS is the fee, not the fee waiver, and
it can be waived entirely or in part, even for multiple papers a year.

> On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 10:51 PM, Quentin Groom <quentin.groom at br.fgov.be>wrote:
>> Our fee waiver policy, whereby PLOS offers to waive or further reduce
>> the payment required of authors who cannot pay the full amount charged
>> for publication, remains in effect.

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:59 AM, Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com> wrote:
> And what about retired workers in the first world?
The nominal fee differs, but it can still be waived entirely at PLOS.

There is also other schemes to cover author-side fees, e.g. the
Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Open Access Support Project (EOASP) for
taxonomy publishing. It is mainly targeted at lower and middle income
countries but has special provisions for
"
Taxonomists working privately (not associated to any institution),
independently of the country he/she lives, OR
Retired scientists, independently of the country he/she lives
"
http://www.pensoft.net/page.php?P=29

Across all fields, only about one third of Open Access journals charge
any author-side fee, but a large proportion of closed-access journals
charge author-side fees (e.g. colour charges) on top of the
subscription fees.

Lastly, licensing is important, as it allows for materials to be
reused in other contexts, which is a crucial way for getting the
public attention that taxonomy needs.
As an example, there are about 800 files on Wikimedia Commons that are
categorized under "Type specimens":
http://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/glamorous.php?doit=1&category=Type+specimens&use_globalusage=1&ns0=1&depth=3&show_details=1&projects[wikipedia]=1&projects[wikimedia]=1&projects[wikisource]=1&projects[wikibooks]=1&projects[wikiquote]=1&projects[wiktionary]=1&projects[wikinews]=1&projects[wikivoyage]=1&projects[wikispecies]=1&projects[mediawiki]=1&projects[wikidata]=1&projects[wikiversity]=1

This is just a tiny tiny portion of the type materials out there, but
about half of these files are used in a total of over 3000 Wikipedia
articles that together get 1.5 million page views per month:
http://tools.wmflabs.org/glamtools/baglama.php?group=Type+specimens&date=201309
.
That is outreach right there.

Licensing is typically not addressed by "Green" OA, and many journals
providing free-to-read publishing also impose unnecessary restrictions
here.

Cheers,

Daniel