Please name some open access journals that are not paid. I know 3 biotech, and natural products and bio prospecting fit the bill. I would like to know any other dealing with microbiology, food, bioinformatics etc.
Plos One is an entirely open access (not "source", sorry) publication effort - http://www.plosone.org/static/information
I suppose you mean Open Access journal where there are no publication fees (i.e. authors publish their research for free). This model is difficult to monetize, and is consequently rare. However, eLife is an example of such a journal.
If you are simply looking for Open Access journals the Directory of Open Access Journals might be worthwhile to take a look at (www.doaj.org) - However, most are following the pay-to-publish model as the PLoS journals (like PLoS One, mentioned by Michael)
As an alternative you can look into journals allow for parallel publishing of pre- or post-prints on public repositories (such as arxiv.org bioRxiv.org) using the SHERPA/RoMEO service: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/
There are many interesting blog-posts discussing these topics only a google-search away.
Yes, sorry Seema, I mis-read your post to mean free open access to readers and did not realize you meant ones without publishing costs. As Simon points out, there are few like that and very few that people regularly turn to since they often have very poor exposure and hence their papers do not get read by many. You might want to read a Nature News Feature from last year - http://www.nature.com/news/open-access-the-true-cost-of-science-publishing-1.12676.
I like open access for any body can download them without subscription....but dislike that they ask for processing charge.......3 biotech is my favorite one for its open access, yet don't ask for any fee.....same with natural products and bioprospecting
Open access journals like 3 Biotech and many other journals don't charge any article processing charges for the first few years or until they get an impact factor for their journals. I have seen many open access following this model.
May be...but, by then I would have handful papers published...serves me well..
If your paper is good.Most of the reputed open access journals are willing to waive the publication charges either partially or fully..Send your paper..Get reviewed..Then ask for the waiver if they are positive about your results..
While 3 Biotech is published under the Springer Verlag banner, it's cost of operation is underwritten by KACST, so I would say that business model is highly unusual. There are very few other journals underwritten by scientific grant issuing national agencies and few such national agency's would be willing to do so. For one thing, it does raise the potential criticism of conflict of interest for a National Science Agency to be both simultaneously issuing research grants, and funding the full costs of publication for a journal that may well end up publishing much of that research.
While I do like the idea of open access publications, I'm actually not that comfortable with grant issuing agencies also getting into the publication business. Nobody would be happy with a pharmaceutical or chemical company publishing in its own self-financed journal, so why should we accept that situation for nationally funded research?
I guess I'm also not at all dead set against paying publication costs either. We spend hundreds of thousands to many millions of dollars on research, so paying a few hunderd or a couple of thousand dollars on publication charges really does not seem all that outlandish to me. Especially if by paying, we help to maintain the true independence of, and quality of, the publication itself. Some of the higher impact journals. even on-line only, open access ones, do actually have significant staff overhead, and that editorial staff is a valuable asset to the researchers (in terms of rapid and efficient turn around time, QC on the final print product, following up on timely reviews, mediating in disputes between author and reviewers and so on).
Whether the specific charges by any given journal are reasonable or not is open to debate though, and it does seem some should be willing to accept a little lower profit margin then they currently enjoy. Although, I think some very popular journals keep their fees deliberately high as an initial filter on submissions, since they get far more then they could accept anyway.
Thank u Noble....I was unaware of that waiver.....will try next time...
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