Re: Springer blasts Open Choice criticism

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

greetings,

Perhaps Springer should have a lot at ICAAP - the International Coalition
for the Advancement of Academic Publication, at Athabasca University:  
http://bluesky.icaap.org/journallist.php?show=isproduced, and rethink
their pricing strategy.

ICAAP provides free, open-source software for open access journal
publishing.  For those who prefer support, however, this is available at
the cost-recovery rate of $3,000 Cdn (about $2,300 U.S.) per journal, per
year.  Just so this is clear:  this is $2,300 U.S. for journal production
for a whole year.  This is not a subscription price.
 This is not a per-article price.

In other words, any university looking to pay the Springer Open Choice fee
who have faculty who might publish in a discipline once a year or so, it
would be more cost-effective to start a new journal instead. No doubt the
$700 U.S. remaining would come in handy to hire some copyediting
assistance.

Another way to look at this:  Mike Sosteric, a faculty member at
Athabasca, in addition to his teaching duties, manages 8 journals for
Athabasca U., and 12 journals for others.  With a little funding, Mike
figures he could do more.  For more information about ICAAP, contact Mike
Sosteric at http://bluesky.icaap.org/journallist.php?show=isproduced

It might be of interest that there are people in New York who are writing
journals about Africa, which are published through ICAAP, on a server in
Northern Alberta.  Since this is an international coalition, I'm sure that
ICAAP would be quite happy to publish journals written by folks in Africa
about the U.S., should anyone in Africa feel an inclination in this
direction.  :)

cheers,

Heather Morrison