RSC new initiatives for gold open access : Gold for Gold

Most publishers now offer open access options and publish open access journals, and work closely with founders, institutions and governments to facilitate these developments. However, for many researchers and scholars, the main challenge to gold open access has been a lack of findings for article-processing charges, which varies from journal to journal, discipline to discipline and could be as high as $3,000.  Publishers have been aware of the author’s payment challenge and many strategies were developed to help authors to surpass the payment barrier. Like PLOS offers to waive or further reduce the payment required of authors who cannot pay article-processing fee. (http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/) and SAGE Open Discounted Fee for OA publishing to $99 per Article (http://www.uk.sagepub.com/aboutus/press/2013/jan/24_jan.htm)

Recently, Royal Society of Chemistry announced “Gold for Gold Initiatives”, which rewards all institutions that subscribe to RSC Gold with voucher codes to make papers available via OA, free of charge free of charge (http://www.rsc.org/publishing/librarians/goldforgold.asp). Many libraries start to think about taking advantage of the new initiatives, but yet to be clear how it works. OANow welcomes comment and suggestion from libraries that has already implemented the program.