Scientific Research: Bucking The Open Access Trend : Tech : Design & Trend

" ... Recognizing the potential to increase the impact of research paid for by public money, many universities and funding organizations — including those administered by governments — now mandate open access. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is the largest scholarly society in the world, has recently launched a new journal Science Advances, which AAAS refers to as 'open access.' The journal plans to publish articles under a license that would prevent commercial uses by default. This includes publication on some educational blogs and incorporation into educational material, as well as reuse by small to medium enterprises. AAAS will give authors the option to publish their work under a fully open license but will levy a $1,000 surcharge on top of the $3,000 base publication fee. Science Advances is going to be an online-only journal, but AAAS will also charge authors $1,500 more to publish articles that are more than ten pages long. They believe editorial services are enough justification for this charge, but there is no calculation to support this claim. They reason this limit is also necessary is due to concerns about brevity and writing quality. However, these issues can be addressed during peer review, a process by which scientists judge other scientist's work as objectively as possible and which is done at little to no cost to the journal, reports The Conversation. Some scientists worry that a page-limit surcharge could lead to the omission of details necessary for replicating experiments, a core tenet of scientific research. Leading open-access journals from publishers such as PLOS and BioMedCentral offer unlimited page lengths at no additional cost. Other journals that have taken a similar approach include Nature Communications with a $400 surcharge, eNeuro with a $500 surcharge and The American Chemical Society with a $1,000 surcharge for open-licensing. In contrast, leading open-access publishers such as PLOS and BioMedCentral offer open licensing for no additional cost ..."