Journal Publishers on notice

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-06-30

Summary:

“JOURNAL publishers will have to do more to convince researchers that they earn their money, Nature says in an editorial on open access. The journal acknowledges that ‘the mood for the shift (to open access) is strong’ but says the recent UK Finch report on the topic shows it may take several years to work through the complex issues involved. The Finch report, like a related report from the Royal Society, makes "the point that scientific output, whether research papers or research data, needs to be rendered usable, and that the costs of curation, hosting, editing and enrichment with metadata, and the continual renewal of such activities, must all be met,'' Nature says. It says the pre-print server arXiv, which adds little value to papers, nonetheless requires six staff. ‘The perception of publishers as profiteers is strong, and understanding of the value they add is weak,’ Nature says.‘Not noted for their transparency, publishers will have to work hard to develop trust amid a fundamental shift in their customer base.’ Nature says universities will face challenges, too, in that they may have to set aside funds if the author-pays model of open access is adopted. Although one model in the Finch report shows a cost-neutral transition to open access publishing, a more pessimistic scenario suggests an extra cost of £70 million to the UK higher education sector, the journal says.”

Link:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/no-simple-path-to-open-access-publishing/story-e6frgcjx-1226411162645

Updated:

08/16/2012, 06:08

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.data oa.npg oa.gold oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.policies oa.comment oa.government oa.green oa.universities oa.arxiv oa.metadata oa.uk oa.costs oa.reports oa.fees oa.recommendations oa.funds oa.data.curation oa.finch_report oa.royal_society oa.repositories oa.hei oa.journals

Authors:

abernard

Date tagged:

06/30/2012, 13:35

Date published:

06/30/2012, 13:59