Open access journals usually provide free access to view the articles by charging the authors for submission or publication of their articles. Those open access journals that do not charge authors are usually owned by large organizations. What alternative business models can an independent, researcher-owned journal use to maintain open access while still not charging authors?
Institutional subsidy, Advertising and Hard copy sales are some alternative OAJ business models, according to OASIS wich is a sourcebook on Open Access. (http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=347&Itemid=377 )
I am one of the two Co-Editors-in-Chief for The Python Papers Anthology, in which we run 3 periodicals. There is no real business model. Just time commitment and someone in the community to sponsor the web space.
Dr. Ling.
What about the costs associated with things like DOIs and marketing? Do you also find sponsors for these?
We had not gone into DOI yet.
Marketing in done through mailing lists and such.
What you really need is an ISSN, and a journal management system. Once the journal had 5 or more publications within a year, you can request to be listed in DOAJ.
What journal/subject area are you looking for?
I agree with Maurice that a new journal cannot start as business. It can start as committment. Unless it belongs to a well-established publisher who has money to invest. Other people can only invest their time, energy, expertise, etc. But without such investments no result is possible.
If I can suggest, please put the journal as open access. Perhaps you can charge a nominal publishing fee like USD 50 per article, that should cover cost for web space.
USD 50 is a good starting point for discussion. What a considered an affordable OA publishing fee in your countries?
I was informed that Scholastica has an amazing offer of USD 5 to 10 per submission (https://scholasticahq.com/pricing). I hope this is not a spam!
The USD 5-10 is what the journal or author pays to run the journal management system, not what the journal makes. So if you host your journal on Scholastica and the publishing fee is USD 50, USD 10 goes to pay Scholastica, the journal makes USD 40.
Thank you everyone. Actually the reason I asked the question was that I do not want to charge authors anything at all. I want the journal to be free to submit articles to and free to be accessed by anyone. I do not want to charge authors because that would create a bias against authors from under-developed countries where institutional funds are not available for covering author fees. Currently I am thinking that in the first couple of years I can pay for the hosting space myself and then when the journal starts getting ads then the fees for hosting can be covered by that.
Dr. Mouzoune.
Thank you for the link. This does look like an interesting option. I will be sure to check this out too.
This may be another thought - "charity" by the scientific community. Basically say, if you are able to, pay USD 50 or even 70; if you are not able to, tell us how much you can pay and waiver in exceptional cases.
In this case, for every full payment of USD 50, you have buffer to help 4 other groups.
Dr. Maurice.
Thank you for the suggestion. That makes sense. I think I am going to go with what you suggested. Thank you once again.
Dr. Tatiana,
In my country (Pakistan), USD 50 is about as much as what the local journals charge. I recently paid a local journal about USD 65 for a research article. However the main problem here is that people are not willing to pay online. Most people here, especially the older generation, do not use credit cards. Also because PayPal does not work in Pakistan (because of issues with our state bank), there are a lot of security issues since we have to give out our credit card number every time we pay. Most people in Pakistan would prefer sending a cheque or bank draft instead of paying via credit cards (which is the only option most journals provide). Combine that with the fact that most OA publishers accept submissions from underdeveloped countries for free (including BMC and frontiers in), the result is that people from my country submit articles abroad only to journals which do not charge anything.
Dr. Khan
Just out of curiosity - What will be the aims/scope and journal title be?
I tried posting here but there is some problem. I have sent them to you as a message.
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