RE: A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

I think there is a misunderstanding here. Is this not an apple 
and pears situation?

You cannot compare Scientific Reports with Tetrahedron Letters. 
Surely the comparison of this new NPG journal should be with PLOS 
One.

I would have thought that the ACS journal ORGANIC LETTERS is the 
real competitor to TETRAHEDRON LETTERS. It was partnered by SPARC 
when it was started ten years or so ago. It does not seem to have 
an OA option. Is one planned?

I do not see any trend towards more affordable OA fees. On the 
whole they increase because costs increase.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Heather 
Morrison
Sent: 10 February 2011 22:10
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

One point that I have not yet seen in this discussion: is 
Tetrahedron's article processing fee overpriced? I would argue 
yes, very.

If Tetrahedron is charging $3,000 per article, while the American 
Physical Society is charging $1,500 for their new OA journal 
Physical Review X, and Nature is charging $1,350 for their 
forthcoming OA journal Scientific Reports, and both Springer and 
Wiley have announced competitive lower prices on their new OA 
journal suites (compared to their hybrid journal prices), then 
perhaps Tetrahedron has priced themselves out of the emerging OA 
market - which in the long run does not bode well either for 
Tetrahedron or its publisher.

I would recommend that Harvard researchers take advantage of the 
opportunity to self-archive Tetrahedron articles in DASH, and NOT 
consider paying the Tetrahedron APF, on the grounds that the cost 
is excessive.

To speculate a little: is it possible that this trend toward more 
affordable article processing fees is an early indication of the 
success of COPE (Compact on Open Access Publishing Equity)? 
Restricting COPE funding to fully OA journals appears (to me) to 
be helping to inspire the creation of new affordable OA journals. 
In the long run, this is what will create the new, affordable OA 
system of which Darnton speaks.

Some of the present players in the scholarly publishing system 
are obviously leading in the transition, while (not too 
surprisingly) some may be lagging behind.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
Doctoral Candidate, SFU School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com