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All-Nighter Ho! -- Academia: PLoS to raise rates

By purepedantry on June 21, 2006.

We have all (meaning Scienceblogs) been talking about this whole free access model for publishing papers. Nick and I even had a nice little debate about it.

Not to belabor the issue to much, but this news story in Nature does relate:

The Public Library of Science (PLoS), the flagship publisher for the open-access publishing movement, faces a looming financial crisis. An analysis of the company's accounts, obtained by Nature, shows that the company falls far short of its stated goal of quickly breaking even. In an attempt to redress its finances, PLoS will next month hike the charge for publishing in its journals from US$1,500 per article to as much as $2,500.

Subscription-based journals recover much of the costs of peer review and editing - and in the case of commercial publishers such as Nature Publishing Group, make some of their profits - by charging for access to their products. But the PLoS journals, the first of which launched in 2003, adhere instead to an 'author pays' open-access model: costs are recovered by charging authors, and papers are made available free of charge to the end-user.

I do not think this constitutes an absolutely mortal blow to the free access movement, but it does signal difficulties. Are scientists going to be willing to pay enough for them to break even? How long will philanthropists be willing to support them?

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Science Policy

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I missed your debate, but perhaps it touched on the idea that granting agencies (NIH, NSF, etc) have the money and power to make open access happen.

It's tough for one publication to get by on an open access model because scientists have little incentive to spend the extra money to publish in PLoS (besides the prestige), when they can submit to another journal and spend the $2500 on research.

If granting agencies require scientists to make their papers open and provide the money to do so, the playing field will be leveled.

This would amount to a government subisidy for scientific publishing industry, but the government already subsidize research, so why not communication as well.