Re: Draft letter for institutions to sign to implement Berlin Declaration

From: Arkadiusz Jadczyk <ark_at_cassiopaea.org>
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:04:55 +0000

On 26 Dec 2003 at 13:12, Alexei Koudinov wrote:

> I do claim that the low-cost technology is available and that the
> community just need to be educated about it. When this is achieved
> not-for-profit journals will be run with no technical quality compromise
> (scholar excellence/quality was always an editorial-not publisher- duty)
> by scientists with NO need to "recover their [low] costs by charging the
> author-institution for each outgoing article they publish". Such journals
> operation may well be supported by small grants (with no budgeting for
> <http://www.plos.org/support/launchparties.html>promotional lanch parties
> in several countries that multi-million grant to PLoS could itemize)
> or Institutional/Library budgets.

I agree. There are many institutions that will be happy to run such
journals, and they will always find the little money that is needed. Running
such a journal will add to their prestige and getting a grant for such a
purpose should not be a problem.

> "Open access" is ethics, not business model of "charging the author or
> institution" for article publication. Failure to appreciate the above
> in my view indicate an unfair bias that will be used against Open Access
> movement by those opposing it

Exactly. "Charging the author or institution" opens a way to setting up a
beaurocracy that will take costs higher and higher. The author or the
author's institution have already paid - but their work to prepare the
publication. Why should they pay even more in order to give others "free
access?" I see no logic in such an approach.

Arkadiusz Jadczyk

http://www.cassiopaea.org/quantum_future/homepage.htm
Received on Fri Dec 26 2003 - 15:04:55 GMT

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