Re: May issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter

[Peter Suber <peters@earlham.edu>]

Hi Pippa,

On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 7:27 PM, Pippa Smart 
<pippa.smart@googlemail.com>wrote:

One point that should be clarified - it is not publishers who
> decide whether papers are accepted or refused, but editors. 
Most
> publishers (at least those who operate ethically) do not
> interfere with editorial decisions. Therefore at the moment 
they
> are not in a position to legislate against accepting articles
> from the "FRPAA agencies."
>

Some publishers have adopted general policies about compliance 
with funder mandates, binding on all their journals.  Other 
publishers leave compliance decisions to individual journals. 
Here for example is the policy for the Nature Publishing Group 
journals, 
http://www.nature.com/authors/author_services/deposition.html

Publishers are certainly able to decide --but generally have not 
decided--that their journals will not accept work by NIH-funded 
authors.

I believe at the moment there is a "watching brief" but if
> publishers start to believe that such mandates will cost them
> sufficient money as to endanger their business, they may try to
> ban papers from such authors - but if this happens there will 
be
> a battle with the editors on the issue of editorial 
independence.
>

Yes, this might well happen.

Peter - you mention some *profitable* OA publishers who do not
> charge author fees. Can you provide some names (or point me to 
a
> resource), so I can clarify where they obtain their income 
from.
>

Medknow is is a profitable OA journal publisher.  All 108 of its 
OA journals are of the no-fee variety.
http://www.medknow.com -- http://www.medknow.com/policies.asp

Each Medknow journal has an OA edition and a priced print 
edition.  Medknow generates its revenue from subscriptions to the 
print editions, advertising in the print and online editions, and 
(for some journals) association membership dues.  When it added 
OA editions to its non-OA editions, it saw its submissions and 
subscriptions both increase.  For details, see this 2008 account 
from D. K. Sahu, Medknow's publisher.  (I haven't seen a more 
recent account.)  http://openmed.nic.in/2911/

I believe that all the other profitable OA journal publishers 
charge publication fees.

Best,
Peter

Peter Suber
www.bit.ly/suber