Friends: "I have worked with a lot of authors in Kuwait (who work outside Kuwait University) who are unable to pay author tolls. Imagine what the scenario will be like in a poor third world country?" says Suhail.
There is no problem here as there are many journals which do not charge author tolls such as CURRENT SCIENCE, Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and so on. Many physicists around the world (including physicists in India and many other developing countries) send their papers to arXiv and the papers are instantaneously available for anyone with web access to read and comment upon. It is only much later that these physicists send their papers for publication in a journal. While arXiv is a centralised archive, the current trend is to set up interoperable institutional archives. Once a paper is placed on such open archives, the author is assured of some visibility for his/her findings. Usually, papers placed in arXiv get comments from physicists from different parts of the world, thus helping the author to revise and improve his paper before he formally submits it to a journal - which may be toll access or open access. Could Suhail kindly provide a few actual examples of poor country scientists' papers, the journals that refused them because of inability to pay author fees, and the journals where the papers eventually appeared? Often, journal editors waive author fees for developing country authors. Jan Valterop may please let us know if BMC waives author fees for developing country scientists. I live and work in India. I have NEVER worked outside India. I have worked both as a laboratory scientist and as an information scientist, and I have been an editor of (several) scientific journals published by CSIR and the Indian Academy of Sciences. I have also served on many international refereed journals - both print and online. I have devoted much time thinking about improving access to information in developing countries and to help increase the visibility of science performed by scientists in the developing countries. I find open access (both open archives and OA journals) to be a very good thing to have happened. Best wishes. Arun [Subbiah Arunachalam] ___________________________________________________________ BT Yahoo! Broadband - Free modem offer, sign up online today and save £80 http://btyahoo.yahoo.co.uk