The birth of the 'open access publishing' is in the economics of publishing - heavy costs in the form of subscriptions the libraries require paying to the commercial publishers. However, open access publishers are exploiting the authors (and therefore institutions) in other way!. In my view, PLoS is one such publisher which charges US$1350 for publishing in PLOS One (that is minimum) to PLOS Biology US$2900. What it further means that such 'open' publishers kill the idea at its publication level itself who do not have such huge money to shade. Authors who can not afford to pay this huge sum, will tend to go to a commercial publisher who publish articles at no cost to author. Let those be read by those who have funds to subscribe! Such publishers have become white elephants and competing to draw sums from the research institutions directly or indirectly. We do not see whether they have ever bothered to see how best they can reduce these costs by tapping alternative means of bringing running costs down. Regards, - Tapaswi -----Original Message----- From: lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in [mailto:lis-forum-bounces@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in] On Behalf Of Subbiah Arunachalam Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 11:04 AM To: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in Subject: [LIS-Forum] A quick guide to open access Friends: All scholars and scientists and research students are on the look out for good journals to publish their research findings. And in the last few years many of them are looking for 'open access' journals so their publications can reach a very large audience. There are shades of openness; some are more open than others. To know more about it, please look up this handy guide: http://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/OAS_English_web.pdf. You may print out on a card and pin it on your work table. The guide points out that Journals can be more open or less open, but their degree of openness is intrinsically independent from their . Impact . Prestige . Quality of Peer Review . Peer Review Methodology . Sustainability . Effect on Tenure & Promotion . Article Quality Please spread the word, pass on this guide to your friends and to other lists. Arun -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.