Re: [tlug] Open Access Journals

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 1:32 PM, Darren Cook <darren@example.com> wrote:
> To be honest I'm amazed that there are 9000+ journals listed here:
> http://www.doaj.org/faq
> I suspect there is a catch, not all of them are fully open, but it is
> still a good looking trend.


I can't say this is true for all open access journals but for journals
like BMC Biology, which is an open access journal, the author pays an
article processing charge:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbiol/about#openaccess

For this journal, it is $2,580 USD per article.  I'm not sure if you
would call this a "catch" since if readers don't pay, then clearly
someone else must since they are still a business which needs to
generate revenue.

While I'm in support of open access, the worrying part is the
potential for a sub-standard journal to lower the bar and accept more
papers to increase its income.  Many open access journals would say
they don't do this but the potential is there.  If the reader pays,
then maybe they are more inclined to select good papers since their
revenue comes from people reading it.

Ironically, open access may also end up getting more readers.  So it
is a bit complex and I'm not sure if it's as simple as "open access =
good".

Ray