Publisher of Free Online Science Journals is looking to cover costs
Biomed Central, an online publisher that offers its science journals free on the Internet, announced that as of January 1st, it will charge authors a $500 fee to have their articles published. They are hoping this practice catches on and that institutions will pick up the costs to have their professors' work published.
Although non-profit journals have been known to levy "page charges" for authors to have their work published in print, the practice is unusual online.
Biomed is calling this fee a "processing charge" and applies it to most authors whose work has been accepted for publication in any of the company's peer-reviewed journals. However, scholars in developing nations and others who cannot afford it will not be required to pay according to Jan Velterop, publisher of Biomed Central.
The year-old company established itself as an alternative to traditional scholarly publishers, which Mr. Velterop call "little monopolies..." But as with several online companies, as it has grown, it has needed to look for innovative ways to pay its bills.
Recently, access to online journals has come to be expected rather than just a commodity. Like technology itself, access to information is expected to be fast as well as accurate and relevant. To this end, Biomed is counting on the potential heavy exposure of potential authors to make their new processing charge less of a problem.
Biomed also hopes that potential authors will turn to them to publish their work as a statement against the traditional academic publishing system. A petition signed by more than 29,000 scholars and organized by the Public Library of Science is urging all academic publishers to make their materials free online.
To encourage institutions to pay the new processing fees, Biomed also plans to offer colleges institutional memberships. This would allow any professor or student at a member college to submit papers without a processing fee. Memberships would range $1,500 to as much as $10,000 a year, depending on the size of the institution.
There are those who agree with the company's philosophy, but many others are against the fees. Some suggest that costs should be supported in a broad and general manner by a consortium of granting agencies. Another argument is that this is jumping the gun. New journals already have trouble because they are in competition with well-established journals. Now they have to charge the authors as well. Still another view suggests that this idea should wait until the current existing publishing system has been dismantled.
In just about any occupation or business, there is a lone voice that calls for radical changes to the current way of doing things. Changes are resisted because they are sometimes seen as too costly or risky. And indeed, sometimes they are. The real question is whether the model proposed by Biomed is cost effective all around. An even bigger question is can any model for online journals be as easy as it appears at first glance.
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