Re: Author Publication Charge Debate

From: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah_a_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2004 14:33:28 +0000

Friends:

Suhail has decided not to submit any paper to any OA journal, because they
"are just as extremely commercial and just as obscenely priced." Suhail
is annoyed with PLoS and BMC journals because they charge author fees
and many authors in poor countries cannot afford author fees. But then
they are not the only open access journals in the world. I welcome him and
his colleagues to publish in the journals published by the Indian Academy
of Sciences, bangalore, India. No author fees and fully open access. There
are many other open access journals which do not charge an author fee.

Also, Suhail and colleagues can deposit their published conventional
journal papers in interoperable institutional archives or central
archives such as arXive. I do not see any reason for being frustrated or
dejected. And the solution offered - increasing library budgets so they
can subscribe to a larger number of journals - is neither the optimal
solution nor can it really solve the problem.

I am trying hard to spread the culture of open access in India and I am
glad to say that the response so far is good.

All of us in the developing world want two things: our papers should
be read widely and be visible; we should be able to read everyone else's
paper without a toll barrier. Both are possible through open
access. Setting up interoperable institutional archives for one's
conventional journal publications and publishing one's papers in open
access journals, many of which do not ask for an author fee, should
satisfy Suhail's needs.

Arun
Received on Thu Feb 12 2004 - 14:33:28 GMT