this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 77 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I’m not even sure what he’s talking about. Open access journals are the ones who charge authors to publish.

If you publish in a journal that has closed access, there is generally no fee to publish. If you want your paper to be open access, you can tack on an additional open access fee so that your paper doesn’t end up behind a paywall. The last time I looked - and this was several years ago - the going rate for making your paper open access in a closed access journal was about $2-3k. We always budgeted for publication fees when we were putting together our funding proposals.

The fee structure is similar for open access journals, except that there’s not a choice about paying them. For researchers whose work isn’t grant funded, it generally means they’re paying out of pocket, unless their institution steps in.

I had a paper published in a small but (in its field) prestigious journal, and the editor explained to me that he only charges people who can afford it, and uses those funds to cover the costs of the journal. He explained that he had a paper from a researcher who couldn’t cover the publishing fee, and he let me know that I was helping out the other person, too.

What I don’t understand is how anyone how has gone through academia doesn’t know this.

[–] QZM@lemmy.world 24 points 11 months ago (5 children)

If you publish in a journal that has closed access, there is generally no fee to publish.

What field are you in? In the life sciences, there's normally a fee to publish closed-access and a higher one for open-access. My last paper was open access and costed about 3500, compared to 1500 pay walled.

[–] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 points 11 months ago

no fees in closed access in organic chemistry, as far as i know. some other subfields can be different

open access can be easily two, three grands, and you better have a grant that covers this

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 5 points 11 months ago

It depends on the journal. I've only published in medical related journals, but some journals don't charge a fee if the article remains closed access. Some journals just have an embargo period, so you may be free to republish to pubmed central or something similar after a year or two. Open access of course always costs money, or more if they do charge a publishing fee. A lot of nih grants have requirements to make it open access within a year, so some publishers at least are just embargoing for a year now.

[–] flyos@jlai.lu 3 points 11 months ago

Depends. Many journals in Evolution/Ecology are still free to publish in non-OA. It's becoming rarer though because many journals are switching to full (paid!) open access.

[–] LyingCake@feddit.de 2 points 11 months ago

I am currently trying to publish in the European Journal of Psychology (EJoP), which is Open Access only. The fee is 750€, if I'm not mistaken, and you can apply for fee reduction. I have no idea how lenient/strict they are with that, or how much effort that would be. The department is covering the costs, obviously.

[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 1 points 11 months ago

My background is in theoretical biology, but I was mostly publishing in public health, physics, and computer science journals. We paid for every paper because I feel very strongly about research being made available to everyone, especially in the case of publicly funded work. I just make sure to budget for it.

I had a couple of papers in one of the PLOS journals, which afaik are fee-only pubs.

It’s been about ten years since I’ve had to worry about publishing, as o decided to sell out and join a commercial company, and they’re pretty averse to publishing. My information might be out of date.

I do think the academic publishing industry is atrocious, however, and I have always encouraged people to check on sites like arxiv, the personal web page of the lead author, and as a final attempt contacting the lead author directly. Most journals that I dealt with permit authors to upload preprints to sites like arxiv, and if you do it with your final revision the only difference would be the formatting. Of course, that doesn’t count as a publication for academic purposes, and it doesn’t get around paying fees for the journals that charge them, but it is an avenue for people to make their research more globally available for free. I’m sure you know of that, I’m just mentioning it for students looking for a copy of a paper.

[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

This guy probably lives in his own small world. If you want to publish in PLOS as a researcher from say Turkey or Uzbekistan or any other country where the value of your money is nil, you might easily have to pay your yearly salary or half of your funding to get a single paper published.

[–] DriftinGrifter@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Can't you just post that sheet all ober the Internet?

[–] Guest_User@lemmy.world 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes but then who is fact checking it and giving it a stamp of authenticity

[–] starman2112@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

That's the issue, you don't want your good research to be presented next to something Disgraced Former Doctor andrew wakefield published

[–] FinalRemix@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago

So don't publish in The Lancet. Got it.

[–] SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.ml 12 points 11 months ago

Of course you can put it anywhere you’d like. Services like arXiv specialize in hosting pre-prints of published papers as well as white papers that only have an institutional association.

The problem is that the job of an academic is to publish. That’s how you build credibility and seniority. For it to count as a “published paper” it needs to have undergone peer review so that the people who want to read/cite the paper at least have the confidence that it’s at least been reviewed by other experts in the field.

There are some “journals” that will publish anything as long as they get their fees. Most academics are wise to that by now, but it can still impress people in business for whom a pub is a pub.