Re: How many journals sell authors Open Access by the article?

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

This letter appeared in today's Independent (UK):
http://argument.independent.co.uk/letters/story.jsp?story=540624

Open access

Sir: Open Access (OA) is a simple proposition, but it is commonly
misunderstood. Your report (Business, 7 July) suggests that the new "open
choice" policy of journal publisher Springer will increase pressure on the
market leader, Reed Elsevier.
http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=538853

However, Reed Elsevier, like Springer, has already given the green light
to OA in response to pressure from the world research community, who
believe that all would-be users of a journal article should be able to
access it for free on the web. OA maximises research progress, and both
Springer and Reed Elsevier have recognised this by giving their authors
permission to make a copy of their own articles, free for all, on their
own institution's web site.

Publishers could convert their journals to an OA business model, so that
rather than the user-institution paying the publication costs per journal
subscribed to, they are paid by the author-institution, per article
published. However, out of the 24,000 journals published today, only 5 per
cent have so far made the transition to become open access journals,
whereas around 80 per cent allow authors to make OA copies of their own
articles.

The only difference between the publishers therefore is that Springer
offers authors the choice of paying for OA, and Reed Elsevier does not.
But authors who want the benefits of OA now do not have to wait until they
can pay their publishers to provide it for them. They can already do it
themselves with a few keystrokes, for free, today.

Professor STEVAN HARNAD

Dr LES CARR

Dr STEVE HITCHCOCK
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton