

Free access to British scientific research to be available within two years - tomgallard
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research

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Qworg
If there is anything that will kill free access, it will be this: "British
universities now pay around £200m a year in subscription fees to journal
publishers, but under the new scheme, authors will pay "article processing
charges" (APCs) to have their papers peer reviewed, edited and made freely
available online. The typical APC is around £2,000 per article."

APCs just murder the desire to publish at all.

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gridaphobe
I believe the idea is that future grants would stipulate that some percentage
of the grant be used to cover publishing costs, whereas current grants include
some money for subscribing to journals. That way the publishers are still
guaranteed to get money, but anyone can see the results of the research.
Certainly less ideal than circumventing publishers entirely, but hopefully a
step forward.

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czr80
I'm curious how this will work - who knows exactly how many papers they will
publish at the start of a grant? And what about fields with low grant amounts
(mathematics, humanities, etc?)

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michaelt
If I was a funding body I'd knock a few thousand off the initial grant and say
"have the journal send me the bill when you publish a paper".

That way, you only have the expenditure if the research leads to published
papers. If the research doesn't lead to papers, well, at least you're a few
thousand better off. And of course the funding bodies would know exactly who
published what when where, and they'd get the right details in the paper's
acknowledgments every time.

As an alternative, if there was funding to publish only a limited number of
papers that could reform the incentives that lead to "salami publication". Or
perhaps it would lead to a worst-of-both-worlds where salami publication cost
funding bodies a bunch of money. We shall see!

