I’ve written a lot on this blog about why (and how) I think the philosophical community should push toward open access. I suspect other disciplines are calling for the same movement.
And now the large publishers are rolling out ridiculous alternatives to genuine open access by charging authors exorbitant fees so that their work can be made freely available to everyone else.
I wrote about this earlier in the year (see here).
My post was about Taylor and Francis. A reader has recently discovered this same option at Springer. This person emailed me their story and thought it might make a good blog post. They gave me permission to post their story here anonymously.
So, I sent my paper to [a journal] published by Springer. The editors sends
me a letter saying that while they review my paper, I need to check out
Springer’s Open Choice program, which is option, so that I’ll be able to
quickly say whether or not I want it, should they accept my paper. If I
say yes to this, it means that my paper is openly available, in both
html and pdf form. Cool. So I go to their website,
www.springer.com/openchoice – which tells me“Springer operates a program called Springer Open Choice. It offers
authors to have their journal articles made available with full open
access in exchange for payment of a basic fee (‘article processing
charge’).”Cool, I think – “basic fee” – what, like $30? I *might* consider that.
So I click on, and find this:“Since costs are involved in every step of the publication process, from
peer-review to printing and hosting the final paper on dedicated
servers, we ask that the author, or their institution or funding agency,
pay a fee of $3,000 USD” – http://www.springer.com/open+access/open
+choice?SGWID=0-40359-12-115394-0That pretty much comments on itself, so I’ll take a pass!
I agree. That pretty much comments itself. Thanks for the story.
Heh. Maybe they could skip the public hosting and just not insist upon relinquishment of the copyright?