Open Access Journals : limiting publication to the rich academic
As a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society I have been following the open access debate, both within the IEEE and in other contexts with some considerable interest. An aspect of the debate that is often overshadowed by the discussion of free and open access to published work is the shift in the funding model which underlies the proposals being made by major players like the IET In essence the open access publishing models being proposed shift publisher income from institutional subscriptions, where libraries pay a hefty fee to allow their members access to published content to page fees for publication, which will are to be payed by the author prior to the final publication of an accepted manuscript. Per article publication charges in the open access debate lie currently in the range of 1500 to 3000 US dollars. How many of us can afford these charges with our current model of research funding? Open access academic publication has serious implications for ho