RE: Looking an open access gift horse in the mouth

[Ann Okerson <aokerson@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Jan:  excerpted below is an older message of yours from 1/19.  It suggests
that among the 100 or so BMC open access titles there will soon be at
least some variation in submission fees from authors.  Do you know enough
yet to comment on how much variation there might be and whether the
higher-cost titles, which require more selection, will then be exempt from
the institutional membership or will there be additional tiered
institutional membership based on which journals (as well as institutional
characteristics) are involved or how might this work?  Thank you, Ann
Okerson

On Mon, 19 Jan 2004, Jan Velterop wrote:

> The difference here is not the "stringency" of peer review, but rather the
> level of selection. There is a clear and sensible argument that journals
> setting themselves a very high level of selectivity may have to charge
> more, as there is clearly a cost involved in refereeing a large number of
> papers that will not be published. However, there is also a need to have
> Open Access journals available for all scientifically sound papers
> irrespective of "impact", "prestige", or "importance".
> 
> As BioMed Central publishes many journals with different selection
> criteria, we have to charge more for publishing papers in some journals
> and less in others. The article processing charges for our Journals of
> Biology (when they come into effect this summer) will in fact be at the
> same level as those for PLoS Biology now. This, however, does not suggest
> that the refereeing in some of our other journals is less "stringent", but
> rather reflects the fact that some journals, such as the Journal of
> Biology, have to referee many more articles for each one they publish, and
> some need to referee proportionally fewer articles.