Commentary

Open Access and the Author-Pays Problem: Assuring Access for Readers and Authors in the Global Academic Community

Authors
  • A Townsend Peterson (Distinguished Professor, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas)
  • Ada Emmett (Center for Digital Scholarship Watson Library University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas 66045)
  • Marc L Greenberg (Professor and Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Kansas)

Abstract

Out of concern for its lifeblood—communication—academia is rushing to correct serious inequities in access and revenue distribution by embracing open access (OA) in a variety of ways: some journals provide access openly to all readers, some allow authors to pay for OA options, some share copyrights with authors to allow open sharing, etc. For publication in some fully OA journals, though, publication charges associated with an ‘author-pays’ business model can be substantial, reflecting costs involved in production and publication of quality scholarly articles and (sometimes) significant profit margins for publishers. Such charges may constitute significant barriers for potential authors, particularly those at institutions or in countries with fewer resources. Consequently, an OA journal for readers may in reality be a closed-access journal for authors.

How to Cite:

Peterson, A. T., Emmett, A. & Greenberg, M. L., (2013) “Open Access and the Author-Pays Problem: Assuring Access for Readers and Authors in the Global Academic Community”, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 1(3), eP1064. doi: https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.1064

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Published on
28 Feb 2013
Peer Reviewed