Hi Alex! Very impressed with the statement. That said, I'm also going to take up Nate's point. It's important that there are a plurality of OA publication business models. While publication fees can be quite burdensome, I'm not inclined to think that they are of themselves bad. We likely wouldn't have a PLOS if publication fees were an OA taboo.
I'm sympathetic to the fact that fees tend to restrict the publications that charge them to authors well ensconced in the ivory tower, but ultimately the bulk of academic writing — descriptively, though not normatively — comes from persons with means to pay the fees, whether through the progressive policies of their home institutions<http://www.oacompact.org/signatories/>, grants, or personal wealth. That first means, institutional policy, is one where this organization might be well positioned to make headway. Yes, the democratization of information has two sides: authors and readers. I'm OK with reader-focused democratization as an independent goal, even if I'd also like to see authors have greater access to publication as well. Does this make sense? Anyhow, kudos on the amazing essay. Mike On Tue, Jan 22, 2013 at 7:25 PM, Nate Otto <[email protected]> wrote: > Alex, > > Great essay. It's powerful, and it looks great on your site. > > I have one question: > > You said, "I will also only contribute to open-access publications that do > not charge authors for publishing." > > What sort of funding model do you believe works for the type of moral OA > journal you want to write for? > > While extracting the cost of publishing from authors, their institutions, > or the grants that provided the funding for their research does put up > another barrier to entry into the journal itself, it does not require > closed access to the public once the work is published. What do you think? > > Nate > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.freeculture.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > FAQ: http://wiki.freeculture.org/Fc-discuss > >
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