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The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will allow its researchers to publish open access papers in normally paywalled Science journals, after the foundation paid $100,000 to the American Association for the Advancement of Science for the privilege:
An unusual and perhaps precedent-setting deal will enable researchers funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to comply with a foundation requirement that they publish their papers only in free, open-access (OA) journals, but still publish in the Science family of subscription journals, which typically keep content behind a paywall for a year.
Under the deal, announced yesterday, the foundation will award $100,000 to AAAS (publisher of ScienceInsider) to enable the publisher to make any paper by a Gates Foundation–funded researcher published in 2017 immediately available for free online. The deal covers Science and four sister subscription journals: Science Translational Medicine, Science Signaling, Science Immunology, and Science Robotics. (AAAS also publishes Science Advances, an OA journal.) The arrangement is provisional and will be revisited in 2018.
The deal is likely to affect only a handful of papers. The five journals published just 12 papers by Gates Foundation–funded researchers in 2015, and seven in 2016, according to an AAAS spokesperson. But it could spur a greater number of submissions and publications from researchers funded by Gates, the spokesperson added.
Last month, the Gates Foundation announced that it would not allow researchers it funded to publish in subscription journals; the move to put into action a policy the foundation initially announced in 2014.
Previously: Gates Foundation to Require Open Access
Related: Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Dishes Out "No-Strings-Attached" Funding
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday February 19 2017, @06:42PM
More specifically, they paid "six figures for public access to its articles from a few journals, for a handful of articles published in 2017". That is on top of whatever fees the Science journals normally charge per paper. Low thousands of dollars, I assume (average should be around $2,200 [nature.com]). Even if people sat around and refreshed the PDF, it does not cost $100k to host some public access articles.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:01PM
That is on top of whatever fees the Science journals normally charge per paper. Low thousands of dollars, I assume (average should be around $2,200).
I'm not sure I understand your comment. I'm guessing the $2,200 figure you cite is based on the average "open-access, online only" cited in your link. But the journals in TFA are NOT open access, hence they generally don't charge publication fees, instead getting their revenue from subscriptions. Some closed-access journals charge submission fees, but these are typically in the $50-100 range and cover administrative costs related to peer review (basically paying some intern to check that your PDFs are scrubbed of metadata and sending emails to the peer reviewers -- note the selection of peer reviewers is generally done by members of the editorial board, so nobody with any actual expertise is generally getting paid for the peer review process at most journals).
But aside from those minimal fees, web-only closed-access journals generally don't charge per-paper fees for publication (generally known as "article processing charges" or APCs)... at least not the reputable ones. (Print-based journals sometimes charge fees after acceptance, particularly for unusual supplementary materials, color figures, etc., but those don't generally apply to web-only publication.) There are a few notable exceptions among reputable journals, like PNAS (which basically used to function more like an "Old Boys Club," originally a kind of publishing outlet for members of the NAS -- it's no longer like that, but they keep the fees). But it's pretty rare among closed-access journals to be charged APCs simply for normal publication.
Anyhow, the Science family of journals discussed here doesn't seem to charge significant APCs, except for their relatively new open-access journal, Science Advances, which charges $3,000/article. But that one isn't what TFA is about since it's already open-access.
All that said, I take your point about the $100,000 for ~10 papers. No way it costs $10,000/paper for copyediting, web hosting, etc. Even your linked story about publication costs is a bit disingenuous, blaming high costs on low acceptance rates. (I.e., the argument is that most prestigious journals reject lots of articles -- Science has acceptance rates less than 10% -- so they have administrative costs for all that. Except, as I pointed out above, the vast majority of the peer review process is done by expert volunteers. Even assuming a 90% rejection rate and the ~$100 fees for an intern to handle the files for peer review, that's less than $1000 for that. Since Science Advances is apparently charging $3,000 for open access and those peer-review fees are built-in, I'm not sure where all the extra Gates money is going... except, well Science demands it because it can.)
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday February 19 2017, @09:12PM
Oops -- I'll just note Science Advances actually charges [sciencemag.org] $3450 or $4600 depending on the type of open license. I misread their statement about "average" publication costs of $2900/$3000, which apparently are based on averages AFTER various discounts are offered.