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In my field, Oceanography, we have not moved to the Arxiv model used in Physics ... yet.

Right now as it stands, scientists work on getting their grants, doing the research, hiring and supervising researchers, writing up the research, submitting articles, and editing and reviewing articles for publication. All that is done for "free" as researchers must publish.

In exchange for all that, they then pay for the privilege of accessing their articles in the form of journals. However, as budgets shrink, the prices of journal subscriptions has been rapidly increasing. In response to the price increase, fewer journals are purchased making the remaining ones more essential. Since these then become essential, the prices increase even more to what the market is able to bear, not what is appropriate. Some of the annual subscription fees approach the cost of a small car. Access to electronic versions often cost extra and don't give you the option of keeping a copy on the shelf after the subscription runs out.

None of that is conjecture on my part. Next visit to your university or corporate library, chat with the staff and you'll hear more.

No one said life is fair, but then again no one says that it has to be stupid as well. There's plenty of blog or content managment software out there. Try it. If it's boring or too much work, drop it or hand it off. If it takes off like Arxiv did, learn to delegate authority (one can never delegate responsibility) and get some help seeking extra hands / funding.

Thankfully there's groups like the Public Library of Science. Hopefully they'll become more used and recognized in the future.

Then do something about it. If you're going to give away your work, don't give it to these private journals. Give it to Public Library of Science or Creative Commons or Free Software Foundation. If there isn't a suitable journal, one can be started.

If these private journals paid for work, that'd be different but far from it. No, if your work is accepted, then, unless you skip it, you've got more giving to do to pay for the outrageously expensive conference, which is held at a ski resort, or at a very expensive hotel in a big city that wants in on all this and will sock you with a special 15% tax on the room, car rental, airport usage, etc. The usual way to get the money is to fill out a grant and expense form which demands justification (in triplicate) for every expense however petty, and it doesn't look good when the name of the accomodation is a well known and expensive resort. The journal gets money, the tourist industry does all right too, and what do you get? No money. May get some reputation of uncertain value. You get to feel grateful that your successful publication helps you hang on to your low paying postdoc job that is temporary anyway. And you may get an all expenses paid trip to somewhere, but that doesn't put food on the table. At worst, you may get grilled and denied further funding, for wasting taxpayers money, and treated with suspicion that all you're doing in your "cushy" job is making up barely enough bs for your special friends to vanity publish in their stinking excuse for journal that has almost no legitimacy. That a very few of your colleagues do exactly that doesn't help.

Wish we could focus on our areas of expertise instead of dealing with these constant attempts to create new or keep existing expenses that are no longer relevant, and the efforts to divert our attention from "why is this an expense" by such ploys as wrangling over who pays, but there's always someone out there looking for an angle. It gets real tiresome when it's not once but the same old deal, over and over, like reading and rejecting yet another copy of a Nigerian scam.

It doesn't have to be like that. Drain the swamp. Starve the beast. Don't go along with these questionable arrangements. Don't make yourself a part of the question. There are alternatives.

The Public Library of Science has been publishing two peer-reviewed biology journals on the net for over a year. They intend to be the model of open publishing. They charge the author $1500, which is comparable to submission charges in other journals. You get to read them for free. Many scientist write a few thousand in their grants for publication and conference travel.

I find this somewhat funny that the link would be to Nature, which is part of the academic publishing "evil empire". For a good opinion on what is wrong with academic publishing in its current form see this

Also, if you're a scientist and would like to publish in an open format or you're interested in scientific papers, go to the Public Library of Science

Nope.

http://www.biomedcentral.com

http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org

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Take note that the real goal of this initiative is not to overthrow the time-tested process of peer review. Rather PLoS supporters are vested in changing the publishing process - away from the pay-per-view mentality and towards an open source type of license for scientific literature, where FULL TEXT articles can be viewed and re-distributed.

Of course the marginal costs for publishing and peer review remain. The PLoS leaders propose shifting the cost burden from readers to authors - by charging a certain fee to publish an article. Their reasoning is that since government agencies such as the NIH already pay millions of dollars for journal subscriptions within research grants, those funds could be used to subsidize the author's fees instead.

In case this sounds like "selling out" quality for profit, consider that it's in a journal's best interests to achieve prominence through a high citation rate. So quality would be ensured by recruiting high-profile scientists on editorial boards. Some journals are starting to adopt this paradigm, most notably the Journal of Biology and Genome Biology

How would journals reap profits then? By charging subscriber fees for insightful commentaries and research reviews - but still allowing free access to the fruits of publicly-funded scientific research.

Can this new crop of open source journals rival the industry behemoths? Such revolutions have already rippled through the CS, physics, and math communtities, thanks to the strong support among authors. A $20 million investment, along with a firm commitment from biomedical researchers, sounds like the kick-start needed.

You know, I think scientists are starting to wake up. For one thing, the equally prestigious magazine Nature had a short note recently about Dmitry's case, which was clearly sympathetic towards him.

Also, you have 27758 scientists signing the Open Letter of the Public Library of Science, and you've got physicists publishing pretty much all their material as pre-prints.

I don't think the open systems that science requires to function can co-exist with the closed systems wanted by the entertainment industry. If an open system exists, it can always be used to circumvent a closed system.

Now, it is easy to demonize "hackers" but it is harder to demonize scientists. Therefore, I think the first real battle will be over scientific publishing, and I want to be there when it happens.

Now, I don't think it will be a battle between scientists and artists, though the entertainment industry may try to portray it as such. The openness established by scientists and scientific publishing will be good for the whole of society, stimulate cultural diversity, and art will flourish along with science.

Hey, if you can patent the software for silicon, why can't you patent the software for cells? :-(

You may have been joking, but a lot of people really do feel like this, and it's a serious problem. The British Columbia Cancer agency just stopped providing testing for Breast Cancer susceptibility genes to all BC families because "the BC Cancer Agency, through the Ministry of Health Planning, received legal notice from representatives of Myriad Genetics/MDS asserting patent rights for sequencing of BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes". They priced the patent such that the BCCA can not afford to pay for it.

My mother may carry these genes, and if she does, then I probably do and any children I may have might as well. Generations of my family could go through surgical amputation, toxic chemical treatments, and even risk death, if these genes are present in our DNA and if it manifests.

So please, don't give me the argument that people are entitled to make money. They're actually not, because withholding this information is morally repugnant. How much does a mature, capable human life cost?

I've often heard the argument that monetary compensation is offered to spur the investment of time and effort into scientific endeavour, and that if we were to stop this from happening then scientific progress would stagnate due to lack of interest. Right, okay - well, according to this study that I just found if your mother lives to be 65, she has a 1% chance of dying of breast cancer within ten years. Hey CmdrTaco, how many people visit this site in a week? Let's say it's a million, and let's say none of you share a mother. One thousand of you will have a mother die of cancer if she lives to 65. Pretend you're one of those thousand unlucky people. How much of your time would you, personally give to see that that didn't happen? If your mother had cancer and you were not locked into your career (say you were in University, not 45 and in middle management) would you consider choosing a career related to cancer diagnosis or treatment? I sure am. And if you believe I care if I don't get a dime from it, you're wrong. I'm not required to do it, but I will work on it even if I have to work another job for my money.

Some of you may wonder what I do that helps - I'm making my career in the area of human information access; intelligent searching, visualization, etc. In part, this is why I am extremely interested in the consolidation of information and its liberation from the greedy. If successful, I predict it will be the largest boost to research since well before the Internet, and probably for years to come.

/. is a focus for a lot of people who are interested in Open Source and Free Software. Most are interested in a way to get their work done, or a way to learn about software, or just a stable platform. Some want to make $$$ fast! Here, however, we have an application which Free software is uniquely suited to:

• It can evolve and change as this initative grows.
• It is without cost and without proprietary encumberance.
• It is stable and has unparalleled technical support.
• It is already built mainly by people who have at least as good moral as buiness sense.

More importantly, here we have the opportunity to catalyse scientific advancement. Try this: think of your friends, family, and coworkers and imagine that work you did help save that person's life, or made that person happier, or enable that other person to help you somehow. Heck, you can even think of the children - it actually works this time!

I urge you to head on over to http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/ and read up on it. If you can, offer your help, and mean it. If you can't help, tell your friends. It's worth it.
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In part .. The Public Library of Science wrote in an open letter

We recognize that the publishers of our scientific journals have a legitimate right to a fair financial return for their role in scientific communication. We believe, however, that the permanent, archival record of scientific research and ideas should neither be owned nor controlled by publishers, but should belong to the public, and should be freely available through an international online public library.

As a social scientist I agree fully with this stance. We cannot leave the open publications of intellectual property "scientific journals" in the hands of publishers. It's a form of censorship IMHO.