Marmorkrebs: The Crustacean Society 2011: Day 3

"Open access did, of course, come up, but closer to the end of the session, and didn't get perhaps the airing it deserved. The Brill representative said (which I predicted he would say) that open access articles are downloaded more often, but not cited more. Ahyong said he didn't have any hard data, but did note that his journal’s impact factor started going up around the time the journal went to open access. Related to open access were questions about costs. An audience member asked, “Where does all the money for journals go?” Fred Schram replied that it would take an afternoon to discuss this. (Another indication, perhaps, that the panel session was too short.) The representative from Brill claimed that the average cost to publish a single scientific article was costs $3,000. This included costs of servers, production staff, and the like. He also pointed out that “for profit” does not mean “no open access.” ..."