Royal Society deems Open Access ‘dangerous’ 2005 November 29
Apparently the UK Royal Society has deemed Open Access dangerous. It seems according to the article that Open Access could be “disastrous” and possibly force “some peer-reviewed journals to close.” Am I supposed to lose sleep over this? Guess what, I won’t. I really don’t care if a journal like Phil. Trans. B published by the UK Royal Society that costs people outside of Europe or North America $2,737 a year folds. In fact, one could argue it would be a good thing. If it did, a peer reviewed Open Access journal could come in and take its place. Are we to believe that scholarly publishing will cease to exist if over priced journals go away? I think that is ridiculous concept — Of course it won’t. Many of the people that publish in these journals do it because they are required to because it is part of their job. They’ll finds a suitable place to publish if these high-priced journals go the way of the Dodo bird. The difference is the over-priced journals being extinct would be a good thing. Even the UK Royal Society admits that “some scientific publishers ‘appear to be making excessive profits’.” It seems to me that they might just be one of these publishers that are making extensive profits when their cheapest real journal (versus Notes and Records) costs people outside of North America and Europe $1,104 a year. Journals that costs thousands of dollars like the ones published by the UK Royal Society are why we need Open Access. I hope no one even comes close to taking the UK Royal Society as a serious independent scientific society in the fight between Open Access and more traditional methods. They have a lot of money to make by keeping access to scientific literature closed.
