Friday, December 21, 2001
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Publisher of Free Online Science Journals Will Charge Authors a 'Processing Fee'By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
An online publisher that offers its science journals free on the Internet announced this week that it would soon ask authors to pay a $500 fee to have their articles published. The publisher, BioMed Central, said that it hoped other online publishers would follow suit, and that colleges would soon routinely pick up the tab to have their professors' work published in freely accessible online forums. While some nonprofit journals have long asked authors to pay "page charges" to have their work published in print, the practice is unusual online. Starting January 1, BioMed Central will levy the fee -- which it calls a "processing charge" -- on most authors whose work has been accepted for publication in any of the company's peer-reviewed online journals. Scholars in developing nations and others who cannot afford it will not be required to pay, said Jan Velterop, publisher of BioMed Central. The year-old company established itself as an alternative to traditional scholarly publishers, which Mr. Velterop called "little monopolies that can charge whatever they like" for subscriptions. But now that the company operates more than 50 online journals, BioMed Central is looking for novel ways to pay its bills and eventually make a profit. "We believe very strongly that material should be freely available to readers," said Mr. Velterop. "But we can't live on air alone, and we have to have some income." Why would a scholar pay an upstart company to get published when most academic journals do not have such fees? For one thing, said Mr. Velterop, free online journals provide more exposure for authors. "Whenever they publish on our system, the potential audience for their papers is much larger than it is in the traditional system," he added, noting that some papers published by BioMed Central draw thousands of readers -- even though the author had expected only a handful. Mr. Velterop said he also hoped authors would turn to BioMed Central to make a statement against the traditional academic-publishing system. More than 29,000 scholars have signed a petition, organized by the Public Library of Science, urging all academic publishers to make their materials free online. Even so, Mr. Velterop said that submissions to the company's journals would probably decline -- at least for a time -- after the fee is instituted. "We do expect in the beginning a bit of a dip in submissions," he said. In the long run, however, "we expect that libraries and institutions will pick up on the idea" and pay on behalf of the authors, Mr. Velterop said. The company's ultimate goal is to alter the whole scholarly publishing system, so that the administrative costs of running journals are paid upfront and articles are freely available for anyone to read. Under the traditional system, institutions pay subscription fees to support commercial journals, and only subscribers have access to the articles. To encourage institutions to pay the new processing fees, BioMed Central also plans to offer colleges institutional memberships, allowing any professor or student at a member college to submit papers to the company's journals free. Memberships will cost $1,500 per year for small colleges and as much as $10,000 per year for large institutions. But even some professors who are sympathetic to the company's philosophy object to the new fees. On an online discussion organized by BioMed Central, several professors said that public agencies such as the National Science Foundation should support free online journals through grants so that individual authors don't pay the bills. "Publication costs should be supported in a broad and general manner by a consortium of granting agencies," wrote Mark Dubin, a professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "The benefits accrue to all who do research." Stevan Harnad, a professor of cognitive science at Britain's Southampton University and a supporter of open access to online journals, said in an interview that the company was "jumping the gun." "New journals already have trouble because they're trying to lure the authors away" from well-established journals, he said. "Now they shoot themselves in the foot by trying to charge the authors." Mr. Harnad said that author charges for online journals would make sense only after the existing publishing system had been dismantled, saving libraries from paying subscription fees for journals, which have risen steadily over the past few years.
Background articles from The Chronicle:
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 Congress votes to raise spending on Defense Department research House passes bill requiring more screening and monitoring of foreign students Journal analyzes the phenomenon of the "academostar" and the questions it raises NEH selects Henry Louis Gates Jr. to deliver Jefferson Lecture Sen. Lieberman distances himself from report decrying campuses' "blame America first" attitude Bill to avert crisis in student-loan program suffers setback in House Trustees contribute $120-million to Bard College, doubling its endowment College in Missouri to cut 11% of employees Unesco plans transnational quality-assurance agency for academe Updates on billion-dollar campaigns at 13 universities MLA to recognize 16 for outstanding scholarship in language and literature Publisher of free online science journals will charge authors a "processing fee" A longtime television writer offers his own online screenwriting course |
Copyright © 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education