Prior Topic Thread: "Author Publication Charge Debate" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1387.html On Wed, 30 Jun 2004, Tim Brody wrote:
> Regarding the article in the UK's Guardian newspaper: > > "Open access jeopardises academic publishers, Reed chief warns" > Richard Wray, Wednesday June 30, 2004 > http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/books/story/0,10595,1250591,00.html This article, like most newspaper articles, repeats the misunderstanding that authors are expected to pay personally. Though OA Journals are only one of the ways to OA, they are a good one-- especially when they will be widely adopted. Great harm has been done by referring to them as "author-paid" I do not think it was ever the intent of any of those advocating or practicing this, that normally the author would personally pay. At least as I see it, the intent is to use available funds (and hopefully additional funding to be acquired,) so that funding for publication will come from the author's university, department, sponsor, granting agency, or one of the planned special allocations. Again, as I see it, it is the intent of such journals--in those exceptional cases where the author must personally pay because other funding is not available--that the author would request and be permitted to pay a lower fee. And surely it is the intent that authors from countries where both institutional and personal funding is insufficient, would not be charged. (Even conventional publishers provide their material to such countries at greatly reduced rates.) I cannot immediately think of a single term for author/university/sponsor/etc. , but perhaps someone else will. And, to save Steven the trouble, I will add that alternative good means of OA exists, which are surely familiar to anyone reading this listserv. Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor Palmer Library School, LIU dgood...@liu.edu and, formerly, Princeton University Library