Open Access Research Papers — US Government Grants Pay Journals
Everyone agrees that open-access scientific articles are great. What most people don’t know is that “open-access” often means that the authors paid the journal to make their article freely available. As in, the journal was going to make money charging readers, but it charges the writers instead. And those writers are usually paying with federal grant money. So “open access” is really “government scientific funding goes directly to for-profit publishers.”
How much money are we talking here? Sam Gershman, a neuroscientist at Harvard, estimates that it’s millions of dollars per week. Just as one data point, getting Nature to make The Illusion of Moral Decline open-access cost a jaw-dropping $12,000. This is truly one of the greatest scams of all time.
Sept 8
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