The whole model is absurd. It is the creative mathematician or scientist who ends up having to pay page charges, and in some cases the most interesting mathematics and science is the least popular, mainly because its correct. (A case in point is a paper in lattice theory that solved a major open problem, was approved by referees of the American Journsl of Mathematics, and yet was rejected by the editors.) It certainly doesn’t command the audience of yet another trivial revision of a popular calculus text. (In some cases, textbook volume sales engineering amounts to a form of sanctioned, rewarded plagiarism.) the “Open Access” model expands the absurdity by encoraging almost anyone to start a journal and sell to young people at a rather high price the right to publish their papers, so they can keep their jobs.

I sympathize with the sentiment that some publishers have been running up the cost of publishing research articles, and libraries don’t want to subscribe to high priced journals, but making authors pay to publish is not the answer.

I was invited to be a managing editor for an open access journal, so I began work, for no pay by the way, but then the publisher began to pressure me to find referees to read papers so fast there was no way they could reasonably check details in time for the promised issues to go to press. The authors were getting upset because they paid to have their work published. They were not concerned about the fact that I wanted to take a reasonable amount of time to find CONSCIENTIOUS referees. I wrote to the editors asking them to consider trying a different model, in which they put in some effort to find advertisers instead of charging authors to support the journal. In fact, i suggested they raise the standards and PAY the authors for writing publishable work. They wouldn’t hear of it. Apparently, enough people think mathematicians and scientists should work for free, so that no model like the one used for publishing magazines and for producing films, and for producing rock concerts is ever going to be seriously considered.

The argument that governments are funding the research rings hollow since in many

How much are these page charges, which, by the way, discourage authors who do very good work that isn’t popular?

“This open-access journal to be offered for free to readers follows the movement in scholarly publishing to make content available via the Internet at no charge. [...] To shorten the publication cycle, articles will be peer reviewed for technical correctness only—not for novelty or perceived impact on the field. Authors of accepted manuscripts will pay a processing fee of US $1750 per article, which is expected to average 8 to 10 pages, but will not be required to give up copyright, as they have had to assign it to IEEE in the past.”

As somebody who worked in subscription publishing for six years and left to set up two ‘gold’ OA publishing platforms this year – Social Sciences Directory (www.socialsciencesdirectory.com) and Humanities Directory (www.humanitiesdirectory.com) – I believe strongly that the current system is economically unsustainable. The arguments (clearly expressed in the posts above), show that there is still a lot of adjustment to be made, to what are big changes in the publishing model. But academia cannot feel that it is exempt from market forces. It was inevitable that alternatives to a subscription model that leeches money from taxpayers to more cost-effective and distributive methods would be embraced, and this in turn would drive the costs down. I agree that APCs in the £,000s, or even high £,00s, still represent significant barriers for many researchers, which is why we have set the fees for Social Sciences Directory and Humanities Directory at £100/$150, with waivers available. Publishing costs money (for web development and maintenance, marketing and promotion, archiving, registration with CrossRef, copyediting, page design) but we figured all of these could be covered by that fee and without being seen as excessive.

Notwithstanding initiatives such as mine, PeerJ, Pi and Sigma, publishers and academics will not resolve the situation themselves and it will take the sort of mandate that the British government agreed to from the Finch Report in June to make change come about.

why does the average cost in a paywalled journal matter? Do we want to do something good, or just better than horrible? Why do Terry Tao and Tim Gowers aim at beating the horrible level? Providing open access costs 7 dollars to the community, at arXiv. So, the question is how much it costs to provide the refereeing and selection process. All of that will be done for free at FoM, I guess, and this work cannot be easily made easier by a paid personnel. Therefore, the cost of publishing a paper at a brand new great journal should be on the magnitude of 7 dollars, not 750.

There are many interesting points here. Perhaps a non-profit solution could contribute to the discussion.

At greatmatheamtics.org, we are pursuing a non-profit, open access solution to mathematics research publishing. We believe a non-profit solution is the only viable, long-term one. Our gold model will work on an estimate of author costs of $450 per article. We have created a budget that allows us to sustain our model with a reasonable number of submissions for the first three years.

We are also exploring outside funding sources, ones we believe will be supportive of a non-profit solution. With adequate funding we hope to eventually reduce or eliminate author costs. This is a realistic goal. As a start-up solution, we do not have the infrastructure and related costs of an established commercial publisher. We expect our cost per article to decline over time, not increase as a commercial model requires.

It is possible any for-profit model of open access publishing will, after price increases over 10, 20, 30 year period, lead back to the position the community finds itself in now. For-profit models require yearly increases in profit and revenue to sustain the business.

Our solution will not require authors to sign away their copyright. Authors will retain full ownership of their research.

An open access, low-cost, non-profit solution to journal publishing is possible in mathematics.

We are just getting started. We have more information posted on our website. If you would like to join us, please feel free to do so. We need all the support we can find to lay the foundation to secure funding. If we can secure this funding, we believe our model will permanently change the way mathematics research is published and distributed. Thank you for any consideration you might offer us.