[Taxacom] Fwd: Fwd: open access

[Stephen Thorpe]

The O/A debate is heavily tainted with agendas. Whether it turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing, and to whom (and in what ways) remains to be seen, and it is far to complex to predict in advance. For example, Zootaxa is not O/A (though does give the option) in order to provide an affordable venue for taxonomic outputs from developing countries (i.e. places where the authors cannot afford to pay to publish). In other words, it is promoting/subsidising taxonomy/taxonomists in the developing countries. Paradoxically, proponents of O/A claim that O/A will promote science in the same developing countries, where readers cannot afford to pay subscriptions! Well, you can't have it both ways! Possibly, the idea is that under O/A, the rich countries can afford to publish in "good journals", everybody, wherever they are, can read everything for free, and authors in the developing countries (who can now read for free) can publish in "cheapo"
 O/A journals with minimal fees, which is better than nothing. That MIGHT work, but we need to look harder at what might actually happen in the richer countries. Budgets are still limited, and many institutions get core funding from the public purse. They will want to publish in "good journals", so may well end up paying high O/A fees, out of the public purse, which will go directly to publisher profits. This may result in less money for research, and may also result in few if any more reads of most outputs which will be of limited interest to all but a few specialists. If so, then the overall result is simply more profits for publishers, less research gets done, and a whole bunch of people get the option of reading stuff for free that they are not interested in reading! Great!!
 
Stephen


________________________________
From: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Friday, 25 October 2013 10:16 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] Fwd: Fwd: open access


Hi Quentin,

The study you cited found an average fee of $US 906, but their survey
included many local journals. Decent international journals charge more,
e.g. PLoS One is $1350, BMC Evol Biol is $2060. I've never paid page
charges in my life and as I don't have one of Paul's typical research
grants of half a million I certainly won't be publishing in these
journals.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Michael Heads <m.j.heads at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 10:04 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Fwd: open access
To: Quentin Groom <quentin.groom at br.fgov.be>


The study you cite found an average fee of $US 906, but their survey
included many local journals. Decent international journals charge more,
e.g. PLoS One is $1350, BMC Evol Biol is $2060. I've never paid page
charges in my life and as I don't have one of Paul's typical research
grants of half a million I certainly won't be publishing in these
journals.


On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Quentin Groom <quentin.groom at br.fgov.be>wrote:

> Michael,
> the belief that Open Access cost thousands of dollars is a myth.
>
> See Solomon, D. J. and Björk, B.-C. (2012), A study of open access
> journals using article processing charges. J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci., 63:
> 1485–1495. doi: 10.1002/asi.22673
> Although this article is closed access the abstract tells you enough.
>
> Also see a summary at http://t.co/TJURqTfmQy
>
> Regards
> Quentin Groom
>
> Michael Heads wrote:
> > ‘If you look at less wealthy countries like low and middle income
> > countries,  they really really struggle to get access and so that’s a
> real
> > impediment that prevents researchers in those countries from being able
> to
> > either contribute or do world class research’. So if you charge thousands
> > of US dollars to publish one paper that will help them contribute?
> >
> >
> >
> > ‘Even with  my brother starting the public library of science...’ – so no
> > conflict of interest there then...
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 7:49 PM, Donat Agosti <agosti at amnh.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Here is a splendid clip on open access, well worth to spend a couple of
> >> minutes
> >>
> >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5rVH1KGBCY#t=170
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Enjoy, and think about what it means for our domain
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Donat
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
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> >>
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> >>
> >> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
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> >>
> >> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Dr. Quentin Groom
> (Botany and Information Technology)
>
> National Botanic Garden of Belgium
> Domein van Bouchout
> B-1860 Meise
> Belgium
>
> ORCID: 0000-0002-0596-5376
>
> Landline; +32 (0) 226 009 20 ext. 364
> FAX:      +32 (0) 226 009 45
>
> E-mail:    quentin.groom at br.fgov.be
> Skype name: qgroom
> Website:    www.botanicgarden.be
>
> _______________________________________________
> Taxacom Mailing List
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>
> The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these
> methods:
>
> (1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/
>
> (2) a Google search specified as:  site:
> mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here
>
> Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.
>



-- 
Dunedin, New Zealand.

My recent books:

*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics.* 2012.* *University of
California Press, Berkeley.

*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Available January
2014. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.



-- 
Dunedin, New Zealand.

My recent books:

*Molecular panbiogeography of the tropics.* 2012.* *University of
California Press, Berkeley.

*Biogeography of Australasia:  A molecular analysis*. Available January
2014. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
_______________________________________________
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The Taxacom Archive back to 1992 may be searched with either of these methods:

(1) by visiting http://taxacom.markmail.org/

(2) a Google search specified as:  site:mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom  your search terms here

Celebrating 26 years of Taxacom in 2013.