Canadian scientists face conundrum with push to open-access journals

"It turns out that scientists are like pop music fans: They want access online to all their favourite material, but they have trouble paying for it. A new survey of Canadian scientists puts it a little more formally: “Researchers agree with principle, not cost, of open access,” it says in a headline ... With the readers paying nothing, publishers turned to the authors themselves to pay to have their studies published, and fees routinely run well over $1,000. NRC Research Press has now commissioned a survey that shows scientists are fleeing back to old-fashioned paper journals, driven by the costs of online open access. The survey of 540 Canadian scientists by Phase 5 Research found that 83 per cent of scientists felt published research should be freely available to all. But only 14 per cent said funding is 'readily available' to have work published there.  Still, government agencies that fund researchers keep pushing them to publish on open-access websites as a condition of receiving support ..."