The problem of financing scientific publications is as old as science is. When you read, e.g., an extended biography of Johannes Kepler (beginning of 17th century), you will learn about his problems when seaking financial support for printing his works. "Open access and free of charge" does not mean that it is free of costs. In this case, an institution is paying the costs of staff, server maintainance, printing, etc. To "create a platform in which we control our science and make it completely free of access", there has to be an international organization which will organize and finance it. You will need a staff similar to privat publishers. Where will its finances come from? Those who are familiar with international organizations like UN know the difficulties of organizing large projects on an international level. If you wish a single platform for all sciences, the difficulties will be tremendous. It is possible to publish free and open-access journals at the level of institutes and societies, but each of them is for a narrow field. Although I agree that a "free" and open access platform for all sciences would be a nice thing, I do not see ways to realize it.

Here is an incomplete list of other discussions about costs of publications, open access, etc.:

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

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

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

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Publishing_open_access_for_1000

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

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is-it-quite-the-same-a-predatory-journal-and-a-journal-that-charges-for-publishing

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

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

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

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

https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-does-someone-pay-to-publish-in-this-journal

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

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

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What-is-a-open-access-journal-How-can-we-recognize-it-and-what-are-the-benefits-to-publish-a-journal-in-it

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

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

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

Dear Wolfgang, thanks for your input. I agree...the problem is the economic source. However, we can work it out, pushing a bit for the public platforms through Universities or Research centers (e.g. CSIC, CNRS, CNPq, NOAA, etc.). We are already paying a lot of money to access the papers or book chapters...why don't invest this money creating multinational platforms? Now the globalization and the world communication has deeply changed. I think is feasible. At the end...we are the people that makes the peer review (for free), the quality will be also guaranteed...

Check this

https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/about

I agree. I have many papers published in Scientia Marina, a Spanish journal, open access and free. Very proud of those works. It has been always like that, but sometimes you consider those journals not enough "connected" (or publicized) to reach a wide audience. The IF is another problem that deeply transformed the choice of the scientist.

Thanks Miriam! I knew it exists a platform like that but I'm not yet familiar with the way to work with. Probably an effort from the EU to stimulate this kind of initiatives among researchers and professors will be a positive action.

Important discussion!! As a researcher from a developing country (Brazil) I know how difficult it is to publish in high-quality open access journals that we need to pay for (in euros or dollars, which our national currency is outdated). We need to move towards free of charge and open access journals. Best, Marcelo

Free of charge and open access is good model, especially for researchers in developing countries to access advanced science and technology

I frequently ask myself the same question. APCs (Article Processing Charges) are prohibitive for emerging scientists / research groups and this creates a strong bias in Open Access (OA) publications, with a clear prevalence of well-granted, developed country scientists authoring papers in OA journals. Investing time and money in local, free OA journals sounds like a smart solution to me! More realistic than creating new, multidisciplinary journals without a proper, stable funding that will make it survive in the long run. The SciELO platform (Scientific Electronic Library Online) hosts a large number of such journals (https://scielo.org/), in which I have eventually published some paper. However they are frequently discriminated for the low Impact Factor (IF) they hold, since we scientists are unfortunately evaluated these days by (1) number of papers published/period of time, and (2) the IF of the journals in which we published these papers. However, if well-established, senior scientists - less dependent or caring with productivity assessments - decide to deliberately, as a policy, submit papers to OA, free of charge journals, this could be a game-changer and help raise IF of local emerging journals. This could also force major traditional publishers (such as Elsevier, Springer, etc.) to bargain better deals for authors / reviewers / editors. The current model is non-sustainable and unfair for authors, who are explored by publishers in many ways (unfair copyright rights, free reviewer / editor work while they make a fortune out of us). Thank you for bringing up this important issue!

"However, if well-established, senior scientists - less dependent or caring with productivity assessments - decide to deliberately, as a policy, submit papers to OA, free of charge journals, this could be a game-changer and help raise IF of local emerging journals." Bernardo, you highlighted a very important point. I'm doing that...and it works! I published with Dr. Soares a paper in MERCATOR, a small open access-free journal (human and physical geography). I did it in English (most of the papers are in Portuguese) and has some citations (14 at the moment, from different parts of the world)...people downloaded from the journal or Research gate and is just there...spreading a little bit. I also did it with Scientia Marina, and some papers have many citations. Is not the journal that gives the power, the reliability...is the peer-review process. Is up to us.

It is definitely time for a change and, hopefully in 2021, 57 years after the release of Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changin’”, there will be changes that facilitate a fully OA and online affordable publication platform as suggested...

Full text exist at Tandofline, but I have a problem to paste a link. RG prevails.

Article Requiem for impact factors and high publication charges

It is a scientific business.

If the true focus of the research for everybody was only the scientific contents, perhaps one of the major issues was not the publishing process?

I have been disappointed by the lack of quality research concerning early childhood. Basic questions concerning children's physical and mental health are being influenced by outside sources that are not involved with parenting or the educational system. Where can I get an article published that offers a deductive conceptual framework for change?

Dear Dan Podraza , your contribution is out of the scope from this research question.

It is appropriate way to ask the question, as you have already done.

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

Beside, there are many articles about this issue. Hope that will help you.

https://www.researchgate.net/search.Search.html?type=publication&query=children%27s%20physical%20and%20mental%20health

I often hear and read that science must belong to everyone and must be accessible to everyone.

I think exactly so.

But then why, in order to disseminate the results of my research in a widespread manner, do I have to submit to the yoke of the large publishing groups that extort absurd figures from me (between € 1500 - 3500) in order to publish in the most popular magazines?

This is a contradiction!

Another contradiction is that all of us, over time, have suffered sharp reductions in research funding and find ourselves unable to carry out the sampling and / or monitoring campaigns that are useful for the advancement of our research. But, despite all this, we are forced to squander large portions of our funding to be able to publish in the most popular magazines.

This is all ridiculous!

And the even more serious thing is the squalid trading of publications that is carried out by the usual suspects who are appointed "temporary editors" of some "special issue" in these magazines in order to be able to publish their contributions for free (often of questionable scientific value).

This is all really bleak!

Dear Vincenzo Di Martino,

Thank you for your incite. Entering the 8th decade of my life, I have decided to dedicate myself specifically to the well-being of young children. Every step of the way, I have encountered similar contradictions as you described as far as searching for and disseminating the truth. The higher education system, elementary education, the political system, the health system, and now the "publishing system" have been disillusioning.

My second paper contains a deductive conceptual framework that fills a gap in parent-child "connecting" for developing psychological resilience in young children. I will soon begin the process of searching for peer-reviewed publishing.

Something related to this: Plan S

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00883-6?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=e0241f75ca-briefing-dy-20210409&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-e0241f75ca-45554318

Yes, the open access concept should change. The research is a leaning process, and it should be published free of cost and accessible to everyone. What's happening now is just a business. Still I don't mind paying if it's only for colour images and if it's freely accessible to everyone, but definitely No APC.

OSI can help get this kind of effort off the ground, but it’s ultimately going to take the active and sustained involvement of lots of heavy hitters across the scholarly communication universe to make this more than just another declaration. As a first step, we need to change our vantage. There is so much more that unites the scholarly communication community than divides it. The sooner we recognize the open forest for what it is, and stop thinking of open as merely a vast assortment of trees and undergrowth, the sooner we can begin building the open future we need and that holds so much potential to change the world...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/04/13/guest-post-a-unified-common-ground-approach-to-open/?informz=1

https://plan-a.world/

one of the most ridiculous things i have ever heard. i suggest that the companies that own/publish these journals have a wonderful scam going. i should point out that i come from the other side of publishing, the news/features/current events side. when i submit an article to be published i am paid if it appears in print, and i retain certain rights (reprint etc)

Open access-free of charge ridiculous? What are you talking about? Scientia Marina is an example (http://scimar.icm.csic.es/scimar/index.php), more than 30 years working in this way...and is surviving. Even if is a small journal, they publish very good stuff, and they could survive the pressure fro Elsevier, Springer and Oxford Press, who wanted to "absorb" the publication. I see that you have very clear ideas about that...

Dear Sergio Rossi , I support this point of view about OA free of charge.

The actions of policy makers and the publishing market make it clear that the open access debate has now moved on to how to make it sustainable and how to manage the transition. Sustainability implies a price equilibrium that leads to optimal continued access to high quality scientific research. A sustainable market therefore balances the interests of the suppliers of publishing services (publishers and learned societies) with those of beneficiaries (researchers, research organisations, research funders and the public at large)... pp139

https://www.stm-assoc.org/2018_10_04_STM_Report_2018.pdf

Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe grant holders can publish their work on the new platform for free. All papers will be scrutinized by peers and the reviews published too.

The European Commission has launched its own open access platform for publishing research funded through the Horizon Europe research programme and its predecessor Horizon 2020.

All papers published on Open Research Europe (ORE) will be available free of charge to researchers and citizens alike...

https://wbc-rti.info/object/news/21496

Just use your word processors turn on your minds and begin to write your contributions as they deserve to be written. Less demand will create less offer and viceversa. Otherwise we all are contributing to this unfair mechanism. Just the fact that a researcher is "suggested" where to publish his/her results says a lot about the impartiality of certain mechanisms.

Nowadays Science became a business, normally the results should be accessible to everyone interested, and all journals need to be open access.

My dream:

An open-access publication would be created titled something like "Parent-Child Connecting for Prevention Beginning in Early Childhood." The contents of an article would be just as important as format restrictions" Theoretical pieces would be accepted according to relevance according to parent-child relationships. Sources for research funding and conflicts of interest would be of grave consideration.

Making the Future of Open Research Work

New models for sustainable and robust open access (OA) publishing are discussed...

The session focuses on the operationalization of the move to open access and the details of what it takes to experiment with a new business model. The model the community has the most experience with, the individual author paying an article-processing-charge (APC), works really well for some authors, in some subject areas, in some geographies. But it is not a universal solution to making open access work and it creates new inequities as it resolves others...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/04/28/new-open-access-business-models-whats-needed-to-make-them-work/?informz=1

Fine Guest Post — Space and Grace in Open Access Publishing

I do recommend to read it. Good experience!

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/05/05/guest-post-space-and-grace-in-open-access-publishing/?informz=1

Interesting indeed Ljubomir, the article target important questions about publishing in general.

Dear Sergio Rossi , I do regularly receive fine articles from Scholarly Kitchen. this article was about OA publishing.

Let me bring the following article about new OA article. It is the story of success!

"We have been successful in many aspects, including publishing almost 1250 diamond open access (free to publish, free to read) papers to date at a total cost of less than US$3 per paper, many of which have been highly cited. These costs include funds required to host our web infrastructure (on Heroku) and fees for services such as Crossref (DOIs) and Portico (archiving of papers and reviews)..."

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/05/06/guest-post-starting-a-novel-software-journal-within-the-existing-scholarly-publishing-ecosystem-technical-and-social-lessons/?informz=1

I supose it depends on the article or the theme... There are factors that do depend. Theme, issue, journal, article..

The more you pay, the higher the IF... it seems it's a controlled, profitable market, where researchers in developed countries are more likely to be able to pay the high fees of the best journals. How to break the cycle? I can only think of a co-pay by the governments or a maximum cap for publication fees, depending on the countries of the first & last authors.

Dear Mauricio,

a first step could be to prefer Journals that allow you to publish for free even if you have an "embargo" period for the public dissemination of manuscripts or to choose journals that, while guaranteeing you to publish for free, do not impose any embargo period.

I am doing so; I know I don't have a great following of correspondents but I also know I'm FREE.

Third Wave – 2020s – AI and Open Content

This decade will see the tipping point reached for open research content between the [top down] expansion of OA initiatives from commercial publishers and the [bottom up] support for Open Science efforts from within the academy. Having more content freely available and more content on the same platforms enables large scale analyses. The economic models are shifting from the value of the content at the unit level to the deployment of tools to uncover intelligence in a large body of content...

The transition to Open in a global research environment requires that we lower the cost of publishing. High production costs and customized systems are giving way to standardized models that produce efficiencies. Current trends are driving scholarly publishing in two directions, small and unsophisticated vs large and structured...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/05/20/content-at-scale-the-third-wave/?informz=1

I agree with the comment of @Jose Eduardo Martinelli. "Support 'small' but serious journals that are free of charge and open access".

Impact Factor is a methodology that does not qualify a journal, it only quantifies the number of citations and we know that journals can use "editorial rules" to induce this data.

Science within everyone's reach.

Is research gate (RG) not the platform you are looking for?

Publishing paper need paid with open access or free without open access. The Publisher often have a 12-month embargo before your full text can be transmitted to other media, including RG.

RG allows a good visualization of the research of each one with an open access like after 12 months. Before that you have the possibility of recovering the publications directly by asking the authors.

I agree with you that a more academic solution should be considered and that it is not certain that RG will remain free or eternal.

Clearly most researchers would like it if people with similar interests to their own could easily access their works - "spreading the word" is a key feature of academic publishing (there's no point doing research if it garners little traction). Superficially, this is a problem, but with a bit of creativity you can easily ensure that the people who you feel would benefit from you latest offering receive it. It's not at all difficult, and not especially time consuming, given the potential benefits (especially considering the time that led up to the publication - months/years). If you'd like more info, email me ([email protected]) and I'll set up a Zoom meeting. In life you can bitch about a problem or you can fix it.

Agreeing with Ljubomir Jacić, Bob Dylan is always a good reference to shake with the one who insists on staying put.

Diamond open access (OA), sometimes also referred to as platinum open access, is a form of gold open access – which means that there is permanent and unrestricted online access to an article in its final published form (or version of record). Diamond OA means there is no requirement for authors to pay article processing charges...

https://www.researchinformation.info/viewpoint/diamond-mission?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Read%20more&utm_campaign=RI%20Resources%20Mayl%202021&utm_term=Research%20Information

From my point of view, Ljubomir, this will be an important part of the solution. Indeed, one of the problems is editing the papers/chapters/books (and also making some, let us say, "marketing" or dissemination), but this is affordable. I know several of these platforms, small but sometimes very powerful, working with the scientists side by side...sometimes you are even more happy when you understand you are working as a referee for these "diamond" open access platforms.

I paid till I was able to make a name for me but now I don't like to pay and so do not mind publishing in non indexed journals free of cost and some of my articles published in these non indexed journals are referenced in papers published in indexed journals...So be happy !

Plan S aims to flip the publishing system to gold open access, with its various leaders often decrying the lack of progress in the two decades since the Budapest Open Access Initiative statement. Specifically, Plan S states that, “the subscription-based model of scientific publishing, including its so-called ‘hybrid’ variants, should therefore be terminated.”

Yet in this case, cOAlition S is praising a publisher that is holding fast to the subscription-based model of closed publishing. And doing so even though this AAAS pilot policy is not a comprehensive route to compliance for Plan S since not all funders in the coalition have adopted the Rights Retention Strategy...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/06/28/aaas-staying-committed-to-subscriptions/?informz=1

We have the power to put an end to closed access research. By only reviewing for venues that freely distribute papers, we will ensure they have the best publications and become the premier venues. It will then become in everyone’s best interest to publish in venues with freely accessible papers...

https://josephpcohen.com/w/statement-on-reviewing/

Open access free large journals survive with institutional or pharmaceutical funding.

Small open access free journals have to publish serious and genuinely good articles to survive.

That is why I also support the latter.

I belong to a developing nation which is generally not included in the list of countries for whom APC are wavered.

Thus, in absence of any research funds,I can only publish in free journals. I prefer open access, but eventually the article content and topic decides the journal.

The most significant acquisitions by publishers over the last 18 months are interesting when viewed through this lens. On the surface, the Wiley acquisition of Hindawi and Taylor & Francis’s purchase of F1000Research look like horizontal integrations — the acquisition of content providers by content providers, albeit driven by the success of the younger entities’ open access (OA) offerings. Both purchasers were able to rapidly increase their OA output more than would have been possible through organic growth in the same timeframe, closing the gap with the largest OA publishers in the market, Elsevier and Springer Nature...

Publishing open access now offers a less plausible ‘Exit’ strategy for researchers wishing to express dissatisfaction with the market status quo. It is harder to move away from larger, commercial publishers when they are also the largest open access publishers...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/08/03/guest-post-one-publisher-to-rule-them-all-consolidation-trends-in-the-scholarly-communications-and-research-sectors/?informz=1

I have received this article from dear peer to share.I do it with pleasure.

Do we need to spend substantial amounts on ‘open access’?

All citizens have a right to know the output of academic research funded through public money. However, the pay-walls between the research output and readers have become much more formidable barriers in recent years. Authors and/or their institutions, and readers thus have to shell out substantial money to access the published results while commercial publishers make very high profit. Do researchers and readers really need to spend the hard-to-get research funds for open access when any published paper can be available to the desiring reader through email exchanges between reader and author involving request for, and sharing of the pdf file?

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Subhash_Lakhotia

http://confluence.ias.ac.in/do-we-need-to-spend-substantial-amounts-on-open-access/

Sensitive and public education research should always be free and accessible.

Heavy charges of journals for open access need reconsideration, I feel.

The world is moving to an online world and print journals are no longer required so frankly journal costs can easily be reduced

See also this new discussion with more information and thoughts: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Free_Articles_Downloads

Sir, with due respect it is submitted that last option is the best for human population.

The paper Article Scientific Production on Open Access: A Worldwide Bibliometr...

I am the editor of a small full open access journal, Natural History Sciences. Even if small, we pay much attention to the quality and visibility of the papers we publish and, recently, the journal was indexed in Scopus. We believe in democratic access to science and we deliberately chose this way, but it has a high cost, especially for small publishers. Currently, we are funded by the fellows of the Società Italiana di Scienze Naturali, established 1856, with their annual fees and, sporadically, by private donations, and institutional funding. Authors and readers are not charged to publish and read. We hope we will be able to cope with the challenge in the years to come.

Congratulations, Giorgio! Best wishes from also fully open access, not paid either by authors or by readers (but, unfortunately, not suppoted by anybody...) Procrustomachia - Occasional Papers of the Uncensored Scientists Group! Long live the Natural History Sciences!

The OA world is the inverse. While there is nothing to stop OA services from having high-quality editorial materials, editorial quality is not at the structural center of what OA sets out to do. For traditional publishers editorial quality is the means to effect a sale, whereas for an OA service, that quality is epiphenomenal. OA is built upon the assumption of abundance, not of finite resources; over time the form of the publications of OA and traditional publishing will pull further and further apart...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/10/13/revisiting-how-traditional-publishing-works/?informz=1

To enact a wholesale shift to open access (OA), which we believe is in the best interests of the global research ecosystem, we must encourage and facilitate other agents of change beyond the funder mandate. The role of the publisher must evolve and grow to facilitate positive change. Our firm belief remains that we should not wait to react to landmark shifts in government policy, and that proactive effort, principled engagement, and collaborative partnerships can impart positive change now...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/10/20/guest-post-transforming-the-transformative-agreement/?informz=1

We from the global south is constrained with lack of grant and government support to researchers , so the only way out might be for (OA) to bee made free, so we can publish and not perish, secondly, free (OA) are a rich source for literature reviews the dollar rates here are very high.

The distinction between traditional publishing and open access can thus be stated neatly: publishing is a service for readers, open access a service for authors. They both work best when the beneficiaries of the services pay for the benefits they receive...

Traditional publishers take the view that they invested in the creation of scholarly literature and thus should be able to extract a toll for each instance of any work that is derived from their original investment. This now takes many forms. Increasingly common are so-called “author’s choice” programs (for example, Springer’s Open Choice and Oxford University Press’s Oxford Open) in which an author is permitted to pay a fee to make his or her articles completely open access...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/10/29/revisiting-a-2008-look-at-open-access/?informz=1

Just today I was offered, by a large editorial group, to act as Guest Editor for a special issue of a Journal with a high IF.

The following is my answer.

Greetings to everyone.

"Dear Colleague,

I am honored by your request but I have decided not to accept it.

I have always been against having to pay to publish the results of research activities.

Research must be free and accessible to all.

I know well that keeping Jounals alive costs a lot (too much) and I am aware of the continuous competition between the different publishing groups to acquire ever greater portions of the market.

But all this was born because someone (wickedly) wanted to introduce the foundations of the market economy into the dissemination of science and in doing so drastically compromised a sector that, on the contrary, had to be left out of the logic of the market in order to guarantee the necessary freedom to all researchers whether they are structured in research institutions or free.

For this reason I thank you and decline the kind invitation you have given me.

Sincerely,

Vincenzo Di Martino"

Congratulations this is very good news for you.

I am one of the editors of a smaller open access journal, Annales Series Historia Naturalis, https://zdjp.si/en/p/annalesshn/. We still don't have an IF value, but the journal is indexed in Scopus from 2016. We care about the quality of the accepted manuscripts, mainly related to the Mediterranean area. We are proud of our work and international collaboration with recognized experts, and hope to continue this in the decades to come.

Most of journals ( not OA) became investors for scientific articles and took profits for their company.

The problem is with ourselves, scientists that do not have the resources typically accept to review manuscripts, more than common many of those manuscripts are from those Open Access journals that sometimes charge as much as it was spent doing the research and many belong to scientists with resources. Have we become their bitches???? It is in our hands to solve the problem, we must not beg to the journals. We also should evaluate and restrain the power of those who decide who does and doesn´t deserve an Impact Factor.

Strengthening research integrity: The role and responsibilities of publishing

An essential purpose of scientific publishing is: “to make the evidence on which a scientific truth claim is based, accessible to scrutiny by peer review and post-publication analysis so that method and logic can be validated or invalidated, conclusions scrutinized, and any observations or experiments replicated.” This process is the foundation of the ‘self-correction of science’ that, in turn, is a bedrock of the integrity that underpins the public value of science and ultimately trust in science and the scientific method...

Open access (OA) publishing allows wider knowledge dissemination, removes reading restrictions in its gold form, and offers more opportunities for researchers to improve the visibility of their work and build a strong reputation.

Because of this, science can progress faster. This is good for everyone...

An open future calls.

How will you answer?

https://www.rsc.org/journals-books-databases/open-access/

Dear Dr Sergio Rossi . Yes I agree with you completely.

Open access and free of charge

I agree, therefore: Open access and free of charge

As a scientist I fully understand the wish for open access and free of charge publishing. I started an independent journal myself two years ago (the Journal of Technological and Space Plasmas - www.jtsp.eu if someone wants to check it out) and I try to charge as little as possible (between 50 and 200 Euros for a full open access article, depending on the length and no charges at all if the first author comes from a country outside the G20). However, I have to say that no cost for anybody for full open access is also not really possible because running a journal (especially a small one) is not for free as well and quite some work has to be done:

1. I had to pay to set up the journals homepage and a professional submission system

2. Attaching a DOI to the articles is not for free as well, it comes with an annual fee

3. Putting them in an external repository for eternity is also not for free but has to be done so that the knowlegde doesn't vanish, again with an annual fee

4. Then there is work connected with each article, you have to search for reviewers, you have to make certain quality checks regarding the language, contents, etc..., you have to do the type setting

5. You have to read the referee reports to make sure that they are also of good quality, etc...

6. You have to check for plagiarism.

I am writing this to make other scientists aware to also consider the other side of the medal of an editor/publisher but I fully agree that science and knowledge belong to everybody and should be as free and easy as possible for every one. Thus, I am OK with a reasonable fee that somebody has to pay, either the research institution or the reader but several thousand Euros for an open access article or dozens of Euros for a regular article is outrageous, of course.

And if somebody wants to support an independent open access journal like mine by reading and citing the papers or contributing an article, I highly appreciate it.

Dear Johannes Gruenwald,

You have, fully, hit the problem.

Vincenzo Di Martino: Thanks Vincenzo, I just tried to shed some light on the other side as well but my opinions do probably not apply to the big publication houses.

I'm afraid you are quite right; what is absurd is that the big publishing houses have sponsors who fill them with money and in this way monopolize the sector of scientific journals (and not just scientific ones).

Open access and free of charge is my option as it increases dissemination of findings to a large research community.

Open access and free of charge

What Can We Learn from One Million Open Access Articles?

These articles cover all academic disciplines and range from those which provide groundbreaking research to that which adds quietly but importantly to the academic literature and supports the development of further research. And as research shows that articles published OA have increased impact, usage, and reach, authors have also benefited.

But reaching such a milestone is one thing — more important, given the data that it makes available, is what it can tell us about how the transition to OA is going and what we need to do now to help speed up progress to a more open science future...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2021/12/07/guest-post-what-can-we-learn-from-one-million-open-access-articles/?informz=1

Open access needs to be equitable

We face a fundamentally inequitable scenario in which researchers are forced to choose a publication venue based not on the nature of their work, but their funding status. In that world the persistent ‘logic’ of our prestige economy – notwithstanding the excellent work done by Dora signatories – would create an academic underclass of authors locked out of fee-taking, high-profile journals due to lack of funds. There is no easy answer, but some routes through the maze are becoming visible...

https://content.yudu.com/web/tzly/0A44aru/CISPC22/html/index.html?page=24&origin=reader

Of course, the free circulation of publications is always to be preferred.

At the same time, as is well known, the free circulation of publications collides with the monetary needs of "big publishers", who make profit their "raison d'etre".

It is an ancient antinomy which, as such, cannot be resolved.

It is also true, however, that the "big publishers" enjoy strong sponsorship from, for example, many companies of scientific articles.

Research Gate also has the sponsorships of companies in the sector to be able to live otherwise all of us would go back to the times when we all sent our papers by post.

This discussion is quite interesting. I've thought about it for many years too... And because of exactly this problem, in Brazil we created in 2018 an open access journal without the need for payment neither from authors nor readers, it is called Environmental Smoke (https://environmentalsmoke.com.br/). We from the team of editors and collaborators have been trying hard to make a quality journal. As we do not have financial funds, we are seeing the difficulty of its maintenance, but this does not discourage us to continue to produce and disseminate quality science for all.

The internet ought to have made it easier for researchers to make their work available and discoverable but, somehow, huge complexity has been introduced into these publishing deals. It’s time to unravel these interdependencies to the benefit of more open research. Elsevier’s current contract has a baseline that is set in historic print spend, and is entirely irrelevant in this day and age.

We’re paying a lot of money to have impenetrable walls put round our content. It is bizarre that our investment goes into shielding content, rather than paying for that knowledge to be open and free...

https://content.yudu.com/web/tzly/0A44aru/CISPC22/html/index.html?page=22&origin=reader

Third option (Open access and free of charge) is the best for the scientific community. I strongly believe that Science should be open to everyone and also totally free.

My preference is open and unrestricted access, as it is fairer and more democratic.

If we look into OA a bit deeper, we will find diversity in OA models: Diamond or Platinum OA, Green OA, Gold OA, and Bronze OA. Many reputable publishers have launched new online OA journals in recent years, along with making their established journals OA. Many long-running journals also follow a hybrid model by offering both subscription and OA options. OA megajournals showcase a new (disruptive) dimension in scholarly publishing. Diversity can also be seen in the Article Processing Charge (APC) model: flat fee agreements between a publisher and institutions, equity models that take into account an institution’s country’s economy, and community models distributing publication costs more equitably among the participating institutions. Transformative agreements between libraries and publishers allow a shift from subscription-based reading to OA publishing. Regional OA journals are being launched to improve equity in open access models...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/01/24/the-other-diversity-in-scholarly-publishing/?informz=1

In my opinion, most of our studies and researchers have been already paid by society thanks to public funds, so they must be available for those who pay for it. We review the ms, the edition process is almost automatic, the real costs of publishing are ridiculous, and, finally, this "open Access" systems (which is not real open access) is causing a hierarchical structure and differences between the researchers (and groups), a kind of scientific classes, which are not classified by good or bad scientifics but for rich and poor (countries, groups, rechearches, etc). How can an editorial justify the APC? Maybe 200-300 € or $ can be reasonable (not in my opinion) but 1000, 2000... 10.000€/$ has no sense, and it is immoral. In my opinion, if society pays for our research, the product of it must be public and free, and the APC is not free.

The MIT Press Open Monograph Model: Direct to Open, a white paper published by Chain Bridge Group and the MIT Press, describes a collective model for supporting the open dissemination of scholarly monographs. The report examines the context for designing the framework and explains the logic behind the model’s design...

https://www.researchinformation.info/news/mit-press-reveals-open-monograph-model?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=MIT%20Press%20reveals%20open%20monograph%20model&utm_campaign=RI%20January%20Newsline%202021&utm_term=Research%20Information

In January 2023, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) will begin requiring most of the 300,000 researchers and 2,500 institutions it funds annually to include a data-management plan in their grant applications — and to eventually make their data publicly available. The data-sharing policy could set a global standard for biomedical research, scientists say. But critics worry that the policy might exacerbate existing inequities in the science-funding landscape and could be a burden for early-career scientists, who do the lion’s share of data collection and are already stretched thin...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00402-1

If there ever was a topic that stirred the scholarly publishing  pot, it would be Plan S.

The Future for OA and Plan S

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/03/08/guest-post-plan-s-and-scholarly-publishing-some-lessons-learned/?informz=1

Free of charge-open access is the best option, normally the researchers and results should be accessible to every researchers.

ANTI-SCIENCE HAS so far been dismissed as a fringe discourse, but that was in the past. Under President Trump, the EPA itself joined the fringe, challenging the credibility of scientists in disturbingly innovative and effective terms: by mobilizing the discourse of openness and transparency against them...

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/dark-transparency-hyper-ethics-at-trumps-epa/

Sharing is caring: US higher education is making another major push to promote a culture of sharing in research, with several dozen top institutions looking to jointly tie open science practices to their tenure and promotion decisions...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/top-tier-us-universities-push-open-science?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial-daily

Scientific publishing increasingly includes data-sharing practices, including code and methods. This means that libraries, publishers, scholars, institutions, and repositories all need to embrace common standards in order to make the data ecosystem FAIR and to minimize burden on researchers, while increasing access to science...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/05/12/guest-post-what-do-library-publisher-relations-look-like-in-2022/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz

https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

Dear Sergio Rossi , open access publishing should enable public access to the government funded research. This is the first part.

Scholarly communication is a massive, worldwide activity whose breadth and impact engage a broad range of stakeholders – scientists and scholars as both producers and consumers of research and scholarship; universities and university librarians; commercial, non-commercial and society publishers; government and non-government funders; and more. The interests of these constituencies overlap in some ways, differ in others, sometimes sharply. As we noted in our paper, these forces aggregated into two warring factions of publishers and open-access advocates. The optimal goals of each group seemed to work to the detriment of the other, with OA advocates turning to the federal government to force open-access publishing of federally funded research, and publishers working with equal zeal against any such federal mandates...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/05/17/20-years-of-public-access-to-the-results-of-federally-funded-research-an-interview-with-the-scholarly-publishing-roundtable-part-2/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz

The second part follows.

10 Years of Public Access to the Results of Federally Funded Research: An Interview with the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable (Part 2)

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/05/18/20-years-of-public-access-to-the-results-of-federally-funded-research-an-interview-with-the-scholarly-publishing-roundtable-part-2-2/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz

Less than half of transformative journals are on course to make their transition to open access publishing under the Plan S agreement, according to new analysis that reveals the slow progress towards free-to-read research at many leading publishers...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/most-transformative-journals-miss-plan-s-open-access-targets?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=editorial-daily

Revisiting: Will the Future of Scholarly Communication Be Pluralistic and Democratic, or Monocultural and Authoritarian?

Looking back on this piece about the future prospects for a diverse scholarly publishing ecosystem, it’s kind of hard to believe that I wrote it only two and a half years ago. Sad to say, the world at large has not become a place more tolerant of pluralism and ideological diversity than it was in 2020. Here in the US, at least, we continue to be whipsawed politically and culturally between a North Korea-style cult of personality and an increasingly McCarthyesque regime of thought policing. And hey — just about everyone is banning books! To what degree do we want to let the scholarly communication ecosystem become a reflection of our larger society’s increasing intolerance of differing viewpoints, practices, and models?

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/07/12/revisiting-will-the-future-of-scholarly-communication-be-pluralistic-and-democratic-or-monocultural-and-authoritarian/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz

In my opinion the scientific publishing system is totally perverse. Cache publishers, where you usually have to pay for a subscription or are charged for publishing in Open Access, do not pay reviewers or guest editors, they charge for their service in one way or another, and on top of that they put more and more pressure to shorten the publication process. This, together with the huge number of existing scientific journals, means that the quality of the reviews is decreasing all the time. However, researcher evaluation systems place a high value on publication in such journals. This means that research carried out with public funds is not accessible to the public, and even forces the states themselves (their research organisations) to pay subscriptions so that the scientists who generated the content can have access to this and other content generated by their peers. A totally twisted system, in which the publisher always wins. Science must be opened up to society, and scientific knowledge, especially publicly funded scientific knowledge, should be open access without any restrictions whatsoever. Scientists should refuse to pay to publish in open access, rather than give up our copyright (can you imagine J.K. Rowling giving up her rights for the Harry Potter saga?), the evaluation system should promote this type of publication among researchers by giving it the same weight as "traditional" publishers, states should stop this abusive monopoly with laws, and the way in which publications are valued in the evaluation of research CVs should be rethought in depth.

Scholarly publishing is in the midst of the most dramatic transformation seen in centuries. Making research openly available to all has become a priority for many, and transformative agreements (TAs) have moved to the forefront as a practical way to accelerate the transition to open access (OA) publishing...

So, whilst many approaches and models exist, we believe that the one that offers the most effective shift to a more open future at scale is a TA that offers inclusive and unlimited publishing. It provides a simple and transparent framework to accelerate the move to open access in a way that is sustainable for both libraries and publishers. Genuine transformative agreements must maximize OA publishing capability, remove payment barriers for authors, move subscription funds to publishing, and increase efficacy for library staff. We believe that author choice should remain the north star in the evolution of open access publishing models. Simplicity in a world of complexity should be admired and not avoided...

https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/08/03/guest-post-why-transformative-agreements-should-offer-unlimited-open-access-publishing/?informz=1&nbd=6f03e560-5431-4744-8998-e00223ee7a82&nbd_source=informz