I've actually been thinking about this recently. It is supposed to make research more accessible, but it only makes research more accessible for research institutions (or the researchers themselves) that are able to pay. It seems to support the status quo where institutions with the money end up controlling what research is accessible. I recently had to turn down the opportunity to publish in a journal because it was open access and costed 3,000 dollars to publish. Instead, I will go through a long review process to get it published in a journal that will be hidden behind a paywall, one in which colleges are becoming less willing to pay for. A lot of universities are cutting funding for libraries, relying on open access resources more and more.

Thanks for sharing your insights Andrew, and I am 100% with you on everything you said. That was also my initial reaction. We either have to go through a rigorous review process to get published and be subject to hefty fees for open access, which is what happened to me here, or pay a hefty publication fee to an open-access journal which I don't prefer.

Publishing is a private business. Therefore, when you ask whether high costs for open access are ethical or not you may also ask whether profits of billions of dollars by private companies like Google, Amazon, etc. and by their private owners are ethical in general. Indeed, the profit rates of some large publishers are extremely high. One of the reasons is the run for high-impact journals and the monopolization which follows from this preference. Although there are many small publishers, the free market does not really work. Another negative side of the impact-factor fetish are manipulation, fraud and other scientific misconduct. For more about this see these related discussions:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/The_monetary_value_of_peer_review_in_academia

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Petition_Stop_Tracking_Science

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_do_bibliometric_studies_get_so_much_attention_in_todays_world_of_academia

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_impacts_researchers_can_create_beyond_citations_and_how_to_create_them

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Death_of_impact_factor_system

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_Impact_factor_to_be_avoided_from_journal_metrices_soon

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_could_be_a_next_scientific_quality_evaluation_approach

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-can-you-judge-on-an-article-whether-it-is-good-or-not

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_quantitatively_assess_the_quality_of_a_peer-reviewed_publication

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Fraud_by_Numbers_Metrics_and_the_New_Academic_Misconduct

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does-Journal-Impact-Factor-Really-Matter

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publishing_only_in_the_journals_with_high_impact_factors_or_publishing_good_papers_no_matter_IF_or_no_IF_journal_and_achieving_high_citation_score

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_important_are_citations_Are_they_overrated

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_true_that_Journals_with_high_impact_factor_always_publish_high_quality_papers_or_the_papers_in_low_or_no_impact_factor_are_of_lesser_quality

https://www.researchgate.net/post/The_quality_of_a_research_paper_is_indicated_by_the_journal_it_has_published_from_or_not_How_do_you_judge_the_quality_of_the_research_paper

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Your_opinion_about_the_following_link

Dear Wolfgang,

Thank you for sharing your insights. I guess the big difference between Amazon and Elsevier is we dont make any additional effort other paying to Amazon to use their service or purchasing their product. In the case of a publication, so much time and effort go into the process with the risk of getting rejected, delayed..etc. Once it eventually gets accepted, we then face the hurdle of paying a hefty fee to make it open access. So we make all the effort, and still have to pay the publisher (not to the journal) on top of it. Reviewers dont get paid either.

The names you mentioned are publishers, they are publishing journals, which have their own policy. Journals are paying fees to the publisher, and the researchers pay fees or rights to the journal. In the end, all are business.

Dear Hayder, good point. I guess my issue is the way they force authors to give up their copyrights. We should still be able to post our articles without the need to pay some hefty fee. We work so hard to produce articles, revise them multiple times before they become ready for publication. We do all the hard work yet we also have to pay a hefty fee on top of that. That just doesn’t sound right.

I mean that just doesn’t sound like an honest business model. Otherwise I understand why it is a business.

Extremely painful for researchers like me coming from a middle income country. 3000 dollars is three months wage for me.

Disgraceful.

Sanjeep, totally agreed and that was the main reason why i raised this question. Not that i wanted to hear why it was all part of the business of publishing and all the other nonesense. It’s not fair and those who are involved need to be called out.

Research works in itself time consuming an full of hurdles. It need money to directly or indirectly. Really it is painful to pay extra to share your knowledge.

Thanks for sharing your input, Imran. I definitely agree with that sentiment.