I don't like them because I believe they provide too much opportunity for conflict of interests to come into play. My own experience on editorial boards of three scholarly journals in the course of 30 years is that good manuscripts are in short supply. Editors with a publisher requirement to produce annually a specified number of issues and/or pages are frequently hard-pressed to meet the obligation. They face the moral hazard of publishing lower quality manuscripts of authors who are willing to "pay to play." There must be better ways to encourage and subsidize open-access publication than via author payments. Are there any ideas about how this might be done?

I usually avoid paid journal. I publish papers in good journals but avoid payment to keep paper in open access as many journals provide this facility. Many journals having  ISI Thomson Reuters Impact factor and indexed on SCOPUS, etc. offer paid open excess but it is limited facility.

Overall this not a good practice.

Dear Jae.

Interesting question. Some days ago I commented with some colleagues the same.

It is not something that makes me happy, but I suppose we must all pay for the services of the journal. But accepting that there are no different "standards" regarding free journals, it ie that the payment does not involve better or worse content but also the review system is guaranteed.

Thank you for inviting me to give my opinion on your question.

we encountered with replacement of knowledge value with exchange value in the phenomenon of paid journals.

Thank you for raising this important issue. I have been wondering all a long 'who is supposed to pay?' We spend a lot  of money  doing  research and therefore, publishing should not be charged. Publishing houses should compensate themselves through subscription fee. This is Academic thuggery Jae Park, but take heart, we have to disseminate our research findings far and wide at whatever cost. Is somebody listening to this?  

I don't like them because I believe they provide too much opportunity for conflict of interests to come into play. My own experience on editorial boards of three scholarly journals in the course of 30 years is that good manuscripts are in short supply. Editors with a publisher requirement to produce annually a specified number of issues and/or pages are frequently hard-pressed to meet the obligation. They face the moral hazard of publishing lower quality manuscripts of authors who are willing to "pay to play." There must be better ways to encourage and subsidize open-access publication than via author payments. Are there any ideas about how this might be done?

Difficult question & I am not sure if you will reach to a conclusive statement. As far as knowledge dissemination is concerned, open access journals seem to serve that vision much more better. The challenge is then how to keep the quality of content, this is a different issue. Paying for knowledge publication is a swallowable concept in my opinion, as far that is being compensated by supporting institutions. Unfortunately, this is not the case all the time, at least based on my own little observation.

It is not considered acceptable, unless peer reviewed

This is another expression of the commercialization of higher education in our time, that in my view will lead to the demise of science and academic world as we have known since it establishment 700 years ago. When companies find it easy to make profit by letting researchers publish their works publically, the boundaries between pure reviewing process and financial interests are vague. It resembles universities worldwide that grant diplomas for money. Yet, i agree with Dr. Khair that keeping the quality content is the critical aspect of this phenomena...

This is a very complex issue. In principle, I am against pay-for-publication outlets - primarily for the commercialization issues that Dr Oplatka raised, and the potential quality issue raised by many others. As Dr Kyalo asks, who pays? I do not agree that individual researchers should pay, unless that is explicitly demanded (and funded) by an external agency. At the same time, I do not think institutions should pay. They pay for research (through salary and infrastructure) and subscriptions (which seem to be constantly increasing even with the increasing absence of print versions. My initial response was for individuals to make use of website to maximize dissemination (e.g. academia.edu, researchgate etc), although the commercialization of these is potentially equally worrying. If the goal is dissemination to the widest audience, I think we can continue to publish in traditional ways (e.g. peer-reviewed journals) and use alternate means (e.g. researchgate, blogs, twitter, personal websites) to share versions of papers for a wider audience. None of this involves directly paying to have a paper published.

@Arif I totally agree with you. ....

Hi!

My research is about "blended learning" and access to education. I like it to be publicly available and not sheltered by a pay wall. I want to think of my research as relevant not only for academics at rich universities in wealthy countries, but also for academics in developing countries and the general public, Otherwise it also limits my own motivation to write those papers. So I will chose open access publishing whenever I can, but not pay for it. There are always alternatives for that, journals run by universities for example. Sometimes my research funding is conditioned as well - research done on public funding should be publicly available.  

Of course I want my research to be peer-reviewed - which is a lot of time and work for more than two qualified persons somewhere and what some journals want money for.

But wait - researchers also do the peer-reviewing for free, and never get paid directly by any journal for a research content itself. The commercial agents in the old model for publishing is trying to both keep and with web publishing and logistics increase income, which is very unfair (but successful). I can web publish research myself, that can be found, read and cited, for example here on Researchgate. We have to find a way to redesign the coordination of a peer review process so we can do without commercial actors, or reduce the cost for them. Research could and should be accessible.

I agree with Jan Gube's statement and views. The quality will be an issue for pay to publish journals and it will lead to enter predatory publishers.  

I like Anders Norberg's observation: "research done on public funding should be publicly available."  Also his suggestion.

"We have to find a way to redesign the coordination of a peer review process so we can do without commercial actors, or reduce the cost for them. Research could and should be accessible."

Hi again Jae and others!

About possible "re-design of peer-review operations" that I wished (and other do as well I see in comments). This is only a beginning of a primitive draft idea:

Wikipedia (without comparison in other respects) has in a way turned a similar process around - first something is published, then read and commented and then corrected and augmented and at last reaches a mature and useful form for general reading and reference. (A problem, and affordance, is that it never stops moving/changing...but that is something that is timely as well - if a text is no longer printed and static...)

If we could construct something similar and have a treshold for when something is academically good and interesting enough (and could be "version-freezed" at that point?), it would speed up the pace of publishing (very much wanted...) and the freshness and openness of academic discussion as well. Why don´t give peer-reviewers open credit of some kind for peer-reviewing (RG Score or similar) and also allow their blind reviews to be commented and ranked by others, shaping a reviewer quality profile within a discipline. You could also deserve (request) blind peer-review services from the research community by doing them frequently yourself, etc. This would also presuppose that initial publication/submission was above some level of quality to start with - people do not want to more or less write others papers for them...and other weaknesses, but I am quite sure that the peer-review process can be re-designed into a ecology among researchers. 

I think that the purpose of paid-journals is create ludopates, not scientists.

The real issue is not 'paid by whom'. The requisite character of a good publishing is the quality and sincerity of the peer review process. If the review is quality and content sensitive I, for one, do not see anything objectionable in open access author-paid publishing. 

Regards

Dear Jae

The real issue is not 'paid by whom'. The requisite character of a good publishing is the quality and sincerity of the peer review process. If the review is quality and content sensitive I, for one, do not see anything objectionable in open access author-paid publishing. 

Regards

Hi Jae, thanks for inviting me to weigh in on your critical question.

In my view--as a new participatory visual researcher--the notion of paying for access or for the opportunity to publish is problematic. With ongoing calls for public scholarship and open-access publications, I do not think it is in my best interest (pragmatically or theoretically) to pay-to-publish. Peer review is an important mark of engaged scholarship, and is incredibly time consuming. In my own reviewing practice, I do not expect to be compensated for my time (monetarily). I believe that this voluntary peer-review service is a critical part of my role as a new scholar. Presently, I do not see the value in paying for the opportunity to be reviewed/published.

There are many perplexing problems here. It is obvious that the one that can pay can publish especially in higher impact journals. But be honest, that authors from the developing or underdeveloped countries with excellent article had hard time or never had an opportunity to publish in these journals. I have witnessed that personally many times. Now the money is put in the center. Previously it was obvious, now the same idea is hidden under open access. On the other hand If you have the project, what is the main idea of the research, that you have the money to pay the open access.

Difficult problem to solve.

Paying for publication is a phenomenon which rose with the transition form an academic to a post-academic world. The traditional academic model was criticize as being a kind of elitist mandarinism, nevertheless the alternative of a postmodern everything goes freedom did not work.

Today the problem is to maintain traditional standards in an open and less structured system. The stake is essential, for the role of knowledge and science in society depend on it. It is obviously unfair that those who have money (wherever it comes from) can be published and those who have obtained results cannot. Money paid for publication should in no case be a source of profit; the payment should cover part of the costs.

The change of the system is in process, it is difficult to foresee what the future development will be. Two points seems clear to me: a return to the traditional system of former times is not possible and can not be expected; an unconditioned submission to the rules of maximum profit making is no way out, because at the end of the day it will harm the scientific culture which is the very foundation of academic writing and publishing. The general questions are: How will the knowledge society deal with the production, the dissemination, the use of knowledge? What will a new expertise look like?

Pay to publish phenomenon undermines the quality of published research work since the payment ability may override the standards!

hello Park, open access journals request payment to cover publication cost while free publication journals obtain income by asking payment for article download. Therefore, the journal standard is unrelated to pay or not. However, untrusted journsal just publish to obtain their payment from authors without any concern for quality of published articles.

Paid or Unpaid, respectful journals ensure they publish  quality papers . Money can't buy quality, and this is a rule for  journals which are owned by big ( corporate)  publisher houses . On the other hand, there is a fair number of "predatory " journals. I came across Jeff Beall's blog (  Colo U ) where he  lists  "potential, possible or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers" . I think it is worth to look at.

Albert Einstein's early papers may never have been published if Journals had been Pay-to-Publish.  Many industrial researchers will not be published in Pay-to-Publish Journals.  For many industrial researchers publication is a hobby not and business need.  

Pay-to-publish appears only to suit academic organisations and large research grant providers (charitable and governmental).  It is a very bad idea for many other researchers.

I agree

I think a lot of independently minded researchers from all disciplines agree that Pay-to-Publish is a bad idea.  However, it is an experiment that is happening now the consequences of which we can not foresee.  Nor can we offer a better alternative.  

Publishers need an income.  

Research needs to be published.

Journals need expert editors (usually unpaid).     

Journals need peer reviewers (always unpaid).  

Centres of learning need access to the latest and past research. 

Research centres (academic, public funded or industry funded) need access to the latest and past research. 

Independent researchers need free online access (if they don't have access to above).

Have I missed any other "needs"?    

Surely, we can come up with a better idea than "Pay-to-Publish" that meets these needs?  

Don't worry, survival of the fittest will overcome bad ideas, eventually.  I predict that "Pay-to-Publish" will not succeed.  It is the last gasp of a dying dinosaur (my opinion).  A better system for publishing research will evolve.   

Late to the party, but I was about to ask the same question, so I'm glad I saw this one first. My mindset is simply: No, funnily enough, I won't do the research work 'for free' (issues of salary aside), then pay you to publish it. Additionally, I don't like the idea of a (two-tier) system, meaning that regardless of research quality, if you either won't, or can't afford to pay, then your article just isn't getting published in some journals.

I totally agree with Tamara Savelyeva

Who is paying whom?