[Histonet] online journals

[John A. Kiernan]

You raise some interesting points. Clearly you're
polling a wide range of scientists; please send
out a summary when you've analysed the results.
Here's my two-centsworth.

Paying to read the full text doesn't apply if your
institution subscribes to the journal (or more
usually to a large batch from the publisher).
Since most people who want the full text are in
institutions with libraries (or with employers
such as drug companies that will pay for
individual articles), avoiding page charges is the
way to go. Why should the researcher and author
pay the publisher? It should be the other way
round. Prestigious journals commonly do charge
authors, but anyone publishing in such a journal
is sure to have a big enough research grant to
cover the fees, which are small compared with
salaries and items for the lab.   

Some journals published by learned societies do
not charge authors anything, even for coloured
pictures if these are needed to make a point.
Three examples that come to mind are the Journal
of Anatomy, the Journal of Histochemistry and
Cytochemistry, and Biotechnic & Histochemistry.
I'm sure there are many others. All three that I
mentioned come free with membership in the
society. The cost works out at about $5 per issue
(print, and access online).

I've not heard of the option of the author paying
and the reader not paying. It's hard to see that
working; even non-profit societies cannot run
their journals at a loss. Libraries have to pay
much more than individual members.
-- 
-------------------------------
John A. Kiernan
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
The University of Western Ontario
London,   Canada   N6A 5C1
   kiernan[AT]uwo.ca
   http://publish.uwo.ca/~jkiernan/
   http://instruct.uwo.ca/anatomy/530/index.htm
_______________________________
Malcolm McCallum wrote:
> 
> Hi
> Which of the below three options do you think is best regarding a journal with both print and online versions????
> 
> 1) Journal is open access, the publisher will charge page charges to authors.
> 2) No page charges (except color plates), but the publisher charges download fees and only the abstracts are open access.
> 3) Page charges are optional for the author, if the author pays the entire article is open access, if not then only the abstract will be accessible without paying a download fee.
> 
> In case someone is unaware, If an article is entirely open access then anyone can read it or download it online.  IF only the abstract is available then you can read the abstract online, but must pay a fee to download the entire article.
> 
> Thanks for the feedback, its actually very important!
> 
> Malcolm L. McCallum
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Biological Sciences
> Texas A&M University Texarkana
> 2600 Robison Rd.
> Texarkana, TX 75501
> O: 1-903-233-3134
> H: 1-903-791-3843
> Homepage: https://www.eagle.tamut.edu/faculty/mmccallum/index.html
> 
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