Affordable Open Access: There's a way, now we need a will

peter.suber's bookmarks 2018-11-02

Summary:

"At this point in the Open Access movement, I think we can safely say that tools are no longer a major challenge - it’s money and people. And of those two factors, I argue that people are the main impediment at this point.

The tools are there

There are now MANY software options for publishing an open access journal. The Library Publishing Coalition has a list of software and service providers, MBJ Digital Group has an “A-Z list of scholarly publishing platforms,” and just this year the Scholarly Kitchen blog re-posted a list of OA technology options (originally from Delta Think).

There are software tools for peer review, there are services for copyediting and typesetting, there is software for hosting a journal’s website, articles, and issues. There are open source options such as Janeway or Open Journal Systems, there are hosted options like Scholastica that include technical/customer support, there are managed options through providers like Ubiquity Press, or you could quilt together a host of software tools a la the Sociological Sciencemodel. There are many new open access journals using these kinds of tools, including Discrete Analysis and Glossa, that can serve as models....

While we may not like it, the truth is that publishing open access journals involves money at some point. Even diamond open access journals have money involved, be it $10/yr for a website domain registration or minimal costs for copyediting.

The software costs to run a modern open access journal are not in the millions, hundreds of thousands, or (in many cases) even in the tens of thousands. Ubiquity Press reports an average article processing charge (APC) of $550/article, and The Directory of Open Access Journals reports an average APC of $937 per article for its member journals. ...

We need more academic-led publishing, which entails scholars leading and doing the actual work of journal publishing. We already have a plethora of affordable tools to enable academic-led publishing, so now what the open access movement really needs is: people...."

Link:

https://blog.scholasticahq.com/post/affordable-open-access-now-we-need-a-will/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.tools oa.platforms oa.infrastructure oa.recommendations oa.fees oa.no-fee oa.prices oa.sustainability oa.economics_of oa.revenues

Date tagged:

11/02/2018, 16:23

Date published:

11/02/2018, 12:23