Open Access, but at what cost?
I couldn’t resist passing on the news that the Max Planck Digital Library has signed an agreement with the Nature Publishing Group to enable authors in about 120 German institutes to publish Open Access articles in Nature journals.
That’s the set up, now here’s the punchline.
Each paper published in this way will cost the authors – or more accurately the authors’ institutes and/or research grants – the sum of €9,500.
No that’s not a misprint. It’s about $11,200, or about £8600. For each paper. Typical article processing charges in the range of $2000 or so are already out of all proportion to the cost of publishing scientific papers; at this level they are simply ridiculous. Recent experiences suggest these charges are out of all proportion to the quality of the editorial process too!
The person who negotiated the arrangement, Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at the MPDL seems to think it is a good deal. It’s certainly a good deal for Nature Publishing Group, but to anyone else it’s yet another egregious example of profiteering by the academic journal industry. The Academic Journal Racket strikes again!
Why is that so many academics and learned societies fail to see the extent to which they are being ripped off by these publishers? The only explanation I can think of is that it is the same reason why some people pay to produce vanity publications…
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In the Dark 
October 23, 2020 at 11:05 am
Why is that so many academics and learned societies fail to see the extent to which they are being ripped off by these publishers?
Perhaps because relatively few have worked in business?
October 23, 2020 at 1:39 pm
Plan S does not mandate paying for Gold Open Access.
October 23, 2020 at 1:59 pm
Reject candidates who publish in such journals and hire candidates who don’t. Do something similar if you are on some appraisal board. Once the word is out, things will change.
You run the risk of missing out on hiring an outstanding applicant. But with tuning this is an excellent idea. How about saying that papers in inexpensive journals will be weighted more heavily in the application process?
October 23, 2020 at 9:13 pm
Some applications require you to be judged on what you consider your best 3 or 4 papers. Perhpas Nature etc could be excluded at that point?
October 23, 2020 at 8:06 pm
Does the cost include the journal subscription for the participating institutes?
October 24, 2020 at 4:46 pm
I try to do my part by providing good referee reports, and not miss anything crucial. That is the same for Nature, MNRAS, etc. For my own papers I pick what I think is the best place for it. It seems wrong though to criticise a paper because of where it is published.
One reason why some journals can charge such high fees is the large number of predatory journals with no quality control whatsoever. Universities and funding agencies want to make sure that papers are published in proper journals, but the only knowledge they may have is the rankings. They then demand that we use the best ranked journals.
I used to maintain a list of astronomy journals for which I was willing to pay page charges. If people wanted to publish somewhere else, they had to pay themselves. When publication money was handed to the libraries, that kind of quality control was lost.
October 26, 2020 at 5:50 pm
“Each paper published in this way will cost the authors – or more accurately the authors’ institutes and/or research grants – the sum of €9,500. […] For each paper. Typical article processing charges in the range of $2000 or so are already out of all proportion to the cost of publishing scientific papers; at this level they are simply ridiculous. […]
The person who negotiated the arrangement, Ralf Schimmer, Head of Information at the MPDL seems to think it is a good deal. It’s certainly a good deal for Nature Publishing Group, but to anyone else it’s yet another egregious example of profiteering by the academic journal industry.”
I couldn’t agree more. And I find the silence from most of the research community is deafening.