Government Social Research
The Royal Society is to allow authors whose papers, are accepted by any
of its seven journals, to pay a fee and have their work made freely available
on the web.
The Society has expressed serious doubts about open access on several occasions in the past. Although they are still concerned by a lack of evidence about the sustainability of the model, they hope the experiment will ultimately be a success.
Peter Suber, director of the Open Access Project at Public Knowledge, also welcomed the Society’s decision to try out a “hybrid” model -- combining open access with the traditional publishing system. But Suber said the plan was also flawed because the Society will not waive its fees in cases of economic hardship, will not apparently let authors choosing the new option retain copyright, and will not apparently deposit its open access articles in a repository.
The fees for the new service are higher than those charged by open access publishers. Authors who choose to pay to make their papers immediately available on the web will be charged £200 ($370) per journal page for some Society publications, or £300 ($550) per journal page for the others.
For a 10-page article that adds up to £3000 ($5500). This is more than double the fees at US open access publisher Public Library of Science, which charges up to $2,500 per article for its flagship journals.
Links within this article
Royal Society launches trial of new “open access” journal service, June 21, 2006.
S. Pincock, "UK committee backs open access," The Scientist, July 20, 2004.
S. Pincock, “Royal Soc. attacked on open access,” The Scientist, December 9, 2005.
S. Pincock, “Wellcome insists on open access,” The Scientist, May 19, 2005.
D. Secko, “Author fee spikes at PLoS,” The Scientist, June 19, 2006.
The full article can be viewed on The
Scientist website