Bundesminister Faßmann für Open Access | MEINUNGSBAROMETER.INFO

Prof. Dr. Heinz Fassmann, Federal Minister for Education, Science and Research of the Republic of Austria endorses Plan S and answers some questions about it.

"Critics argue that in the case of an open access obligation, publishers could no longer perform the quality reviews to the same extent - how do you see that?

I can not understand this argument. In any case, I have no empirical evidence for it. Quality assurance is always carried out by scientists without any remuneration. Either the subscribing author or the author of the article pays an Article Processing Charge for publication. I do not see a financial problem there. But one thing is the peer review, which, however, is not related to the cash flow, but to the number of experts who have to evaluate an increasing number of publications. With such divergent quantitative developments, qualitative problems can arise. Incidents from the past have shown that. There are, however, indications that quality assurance in OA journals sometimes works better than with classic journals. Incidentally, the question of quality not only arises with the submissions, but also with the publishers. Therefore, initiatives are to be welcomed that try to introduce quality criteria here as well. One of these is the Directory of Open Access Journals...."