Open-access plan draws online protest | Science | AAAS

peter.suber's bookmarks 2018-11-09

Summary:

"Hundreds of scientists are pushing back against Plan S, a plan to crack down on scholarly journals’ paywalls, launched 2 months ago by 11 national research funders in Europe. In an open letter published on 5 November, about 800 signatories say they support open access (OA)—making papers available free to all readers online—but condemn Plan S as “too risky for science.”

The letter slams the plan’s decision to stop paying for researchers to publish in so-called “hybrid” journals of scientific societies such as the American Chemical Society. Hybrid publications earn revenue from both reader subscription fees and article processing charges (APCs) paid by authors who want to make their papers immediately accessible. “Effectively Plan S would block access to exactly those journals that work with a valuable and rigorous peer-review system of high quality,” the letter says.

Robert-Jan Smits, OA envoy for the European Commission in Brussels and one of the architects of Plan S, says he has “enormous respect” for the work of learned societies, but no tolerance for some journals’ “sometimes outrageous” subscription fees. Hybrid journals were meant as a step to help subscription journals move toward full OA, he says, but they have endured as profitmaking ventures that rely on public funding, without a clear exit in sight.

Plan S stipulates that funders will pick up the bill for APCs, which the letter signers see as a gift to publications that charge authors, instead of readers. (Some OA journals are free for both readers and authors.) Lynn Kamerlin, a structural biologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who penned the open letter, says this move will provide an incentive for journals to publish a high volume of papers, rather than fewer, higher-quality articles...."

Link:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/open-access-plan-draws-online-protest

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.objections oa.debates oa.plan_s oa.mandates oa.quality oa.fees oa.no-fee oa.hybrid oa.societies oa.policies

Date tagged:

11/09/2018, 14:02

Date published:

11/09/2018, 09:02