Hi again,
Thanks for the contributions everyone. My experience is largely taxonomy, so that's what I can comment on. I also consider it particularly important that new taxonomy is freely available due to the nature of its universal application.
Two further open access, no fees journals are European Journal of Taxonomy, and Helgoland Marine Research.
Open access page charges per page in Zootaxa are USD 20, so that's $400 for 20 pages, $600 for 30 pages, no minimum charge.
Open access page charges per page in Zookeys are USD 20 (converted from Euros), minimum $800 for 1-40 pages. They have a discount for retired scientists, & other waivers.
As far as I know both are not subsidised, although the topic-specialist editors are volunteers and essential contributors of free services the publisher can't do without, as at many journals.
Those two don't look to have excessive fees to me, to either pay out of my pocket, or get funded by an institute or a funding agency. Such funding should be built into the PI's or project's funding application budget, not left as an afterthought (with the caveat that some funding agencies may refuse to pay for open access - they should though).
A society journal with open access offered is Proc Biol Soc Washington, once a favoured journal for worm biologists. They are charging a flat USD 1000 per article. That seems to me to be excessive, particularly for a small article. Also subscribers (society members) who publish & are funded are charged USD 65 per page. If I recall correctly it used to be nearly free to encourage membership of the society. If what a society is offering members is worse than a commercial publisher there's something unsustainable going on.
I don't regard archiving sites highly. Hard to find and I don't want a preprint, I want the final which lies at the end of the DOI trail. Servers like ResearchGate and Sci-Hub have their uses for hunting for final versions, but are hit and miss, sometimes illegal (ResearchGate), or definitely illegal, and are probably going to be wiped out by their opponents some time soon.
I don't think the International Polychaetology Association starting a journal is feasible, but one thing that could be done is to run a permanent fund to subsidise open access fees for young researchers. It would have to be professionally set up to accept donations and be bullet-proof against misuse and to allow for turnover in administrators.
Cheers,
Geoff Read
-----Original Message-----
From: Aida Verdes <aida.verdes from uam.es>
Sent: Thursday, 28 February 2019 9:03 a.m.
To: Igor Jirkov <ampharete from yandex.ru>
Cc: Geoff Read <Geoffrey.Read from niwa.co.nz>; annelida from net.bio.net <annelida from magpie.bio.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: [Annelida] Open access
Dear Igor,
I was thinking more of a dedicated journal for Annelids, similar to the Journal of Molluscan Studies of the Malacological Society of London, but publishing open access and free of charge. I don’t think a journal like that exists, but please correct me if it does.
In any case, thank you very much for pointing out those journals, I actually did not know some of them existed. This was another suggestion that I think could be helpful, coming up with a list of open access journals that don’t charge publication fees. Although I would probably not include Zootaxa as authors are *strongly encouraged* to pay a fee to grant free online access.
Anyways, regarding publishing OA, I agree with Eduardo that the best option to make our work accessible to everyone seems to be posting preprints in bioRxiv and servers alike.
All the best,
Aida
> On Feb 27, 2019, at 6:44 PM, Igor Jirkov <ampharete from yandex.ru> wrote:
>> Aida Verdes wrote: “but it might be more helpful to come up with constructive proposals, such as maybe creating an open access journal dedicated to annelid taxonomy and systematics”
> Such journals already exist and have enough high SJR:
> Zootaxa SJR 2017 0.26 Not Open Access, free
> Zoosystematica Rossica SJR 2017 0.369 Open Access, free
> Invertebrate Zoology SJR 2017 0.24 Open Access, free
> wormly
> Igor
>>> --
> Dr. Sc. Igor A. Jirkov
> Leading Scientific Fellow
> Department of Hydrobiology
> Biological faculty
> Moscow State University
> Moscow
> Russia
>http://hydro.bio.msu.ru/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=92&Itemid=95>
