Thank you for your answer. I have dealt a lot with the economics behind both type of journals and i know that open source is the future (e.g. look at the nature consortium: most of the journals launched in the past years are open source).

I asked this question because i was wondering what researchers actually think is a "fair" sum to pay.

I think one must draw a three column (at least) table where to put the efforts of each of the editor, the reviewers, and the authors and try to put in the columns the efforts performed by each of the actors. Knowing that neither the reviewers, nor trhe authors are paid. I am wandering whether the editor does that much to be paid. Of course, some of them do, but not all. Publishing in some good quality journals is some times free. So quality can be reached without having (authors or readers) to pay (there exist high quality free journals). As said Oscar, if the editor performs some real work, it can be perceived as normal to pay for the editing (authors or readers), but most of the formating issue is performed for free by the authors that generally stick tightly to the provided template (otherwise the paper is rejected). So I am wandering why paying the editor of electronic journals) to perform less than the authors and/or reviewers do.

May be some other interresting question: do authors and/or reviewers need to be paid as they bear the reputation of the journal ?

I am more for a free e-journal world for both the authors and readers .... isn't that one of the objectives of ResearchGate ?

Cheers

Actually most of the "classic" journals receive income from the high cost of subscriptions and advertisement. So, both type of journals gain the same amount of money, the problem is open access or not.

Apart from the editor, there are the people who handle websites, indexing and uploading all the articles, website editors and so on... as such the costs are bigger than what you see on the "outside"

researchers write, researchers review, researchers read .... and some one else put the money in the pocket. I guess there is something wrong with the equation don't you :)

I think we should really review how the system operate, but that takes time (however some journals operate in this direction).

So to answer the question, I think no one should pay but may be some (scientific) advertisement (under the form of industrial technological news) could cover this (not that high) cost ... until a better system shows up.

Kind regards

Jalil

I agree that your vision is great Jalil, but this won't happen soon. I am talking about the situation on the market now.

The problem with your equation is:

1. Researchers write and get paid indirectly through better positions in the academia and grants. If they work for the industry then it is even better.

2. Researchers review for the reasons presented at 1. and, at the moment, it is stipulated (no clear sources) that big journals such as Nature and Science actually pay reviewers.

3. Researchers read because they must be up-to-date in their field (in medicine it is called Continuing Medical Education [CME]) and because they want to publish articles (which gets us back to 1.).

As mentioned before in one of my answers, I think we, researchers, because i have worked in research, for free until now, do not actually know the amount of work put in behind the scenes.

Also, most researchers do not pay directly, they pay from the funds offered by their grant actually.

I would also like to bring this discussion back on track. Jalil's opinion is no pay at all. I would like to hear more opinions like this supported by the answer to the question why?

please allow me a last word as your question is extremly interresting:

1- Researchers get retributed for the quality of their work and not for the money they pay to get published (not necessarily a relationship between both).

2- Researchers review because they are interrested in colleagues' work, to keep themselves uptodate with their field, and to help other colleagues projects of issueing a journal on a given subject. And the fact that they are indirectly retributed for that is just ... a consequence.

3- Researchers read their colleagues work, for the reasons you stated, but still why paying for reading a work published and formatted for free ...

Many thanks for having asked such a question.

Kind regards

Jalil

i would like to be free

I would expect it to be free (going a bit further than Allen). Why should a researcher pay for a journal to get more interesting by publishing interesting content, it received for free? It's a giving and taking, isn't it?

Thank you very much for your well thought out answer Peter and for the great information on DOAJ.

I did not know the database also published prices. In case you know any other sites like this please let me know.

depends on authors profession

I appreciate the thoughtful responses to this post.

I would add that OA business models are evolving. For more information, see the @ccess site at http://access.okfn.org/ In life sciences, two new open access journals with low or free filing fees are eLife (http://www.elifesciences.org/) and PeerJ (http://peerj.com/).

Finally, please see the attached paper for more information about OA and scientific research.

Cheers,

-- Thomas

Article The Impact of Open Access and Social Media on Scientific Research