[LIS-Forum] Open-access more harm than good in developing world

[Gautam John]

Suber has a good take on this:

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/05/more-misunderstanding-of-oa-journal.html

    *  I blame Nature, not the author, for the misleading title on
this letter.  Gadagkar's argument is not against OA as such, or even
OA journals as such, but against fee-based OA journals or "the 'pay to
publish and read for free' business model".
    * Gadagkar is aware that many fee-based OA journals waive their
fees in cases of economic hardship (although we should not confuse
publication fees at OA journals with "page charges").  He's also aware
that many funding agencies allow grantees use grant funds to pay the
fees.  He finds these two mitigations insufficient and I won't comment
on his criticisms.
    * But he is apparently unaware that most OA journals charge no
publication fees at all.  To repeat the data from my previous post
(coincidentally relevant here):  as of late 2007, 67% of the journals
listed in the DOAJ charged no publication fees, and 83% of OA journals
from society publishers charged no publication fees.  He says that "A
'publish for free, read for free' model may one day prove to be
viable..." as if it were untried, when in fact it is the majority
model around the world.  Moreover, it's the exclusive model in his own
country.  To the best of my knowledge, all OA journals published in
India are of the no-fee variety.
    * Finally, it's important to remember that OA archiving already
follows the model of no fees for readers and no fees for authors, and
it works equally well for unrefereed preprints and refereed
postprints.  Just this week, the OA repository at Gadagkar's employer,
the Indian Institute of Science, passed the milestone of 10,000
deposits.


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