[LINK] Open access publishing not a threat to research grants

[Tom Worthington]

Wednesday's Australian newspaper contains a report " Open access a 
threat to grants" (Bernard Lane
24 January 2007) 
<http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,21106899,00.html>:

"THE historically low success rate for competitive grant applications 
could dip further as an unintended consequence of the move to open 
access publishing. ...

If authors were allowed to cover those costs from grant money, then a 
new administrative and financial burden would fall on agencies such 
as the ARC. ...

Funding agencies would have to estimate publication costs before 
giving a grant and would probably have to audit this expenditure at 
project's end, the ARC says in a new submission to the Productivity 
Commission's inquiry into public support for science and innovation. ..."
---

This analysis is flawed, as it assumes researchers have to pay a lot 
of money to have their research published with open access. The ACS, 
for example, does not charge for publication in its journals 
<http://dl.acs.org.au/>. It charges conference organizers about $50 
per paper for conference proceedings to cover costs 
<http://dl.acs.org.au/index.php/crpit>.

My experiments with using on-line advertising to cover publishing 
costs seem to be going okay 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/qpublishing.shtml#advertising>. 
It should be about enough to cover the cost of publication for a 
non-profit publication.

Commercial publishers should be able to make a reasonable profit with 
a combination of ads and modest subscription fees, without large 
charges to authors.

Perhaps some indicator is needed to show those articles for which 
authors have paid to have published. These can then be discounted buy 
the reader (and excluded from reputable lists of published research). 
Unfortunately Australian universities have been encouraging such 
vanity publishing by their own university presses.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml