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Who Will Pay For Open Access?
babble123 writes "IEEE is thinking about providing everyone with free access to its publication database (which has saved many a grad student from a trip to the library). The problem is, where will they get the money to fund the journals if not from subscriptions? In this article, they discuss one proposed alternative, 'author-pays,' but they certainly aren't enthusiastic about it, and I don't blame them. And yet, the money has to come from somewhere. Any better ideas?"
Why don't they just make it available on the net and see what happens.
The net has a reputation for novel ways of propogating data. Maybe servers will be donated. Perhaps a company would sponsor the service. Perhaps bittorrents would work. Perhaps they would be uploaded into sourceforge. Perhaps one could rely on Google caches. Maybe power users, like universities, could mirror their database.
Seriously, put it online, see what the public does.
Philosophistry
I know I have a European bias toward this, but why couldn't the ? I mean, given the huge funds invested in private research (ahem colossal military budget), I am sure this would really be a drop in the bucket but will have great effects.
I mean, why not just put it under a military budget or academia ?
Access to this online content is one of the only reasons I keep up my IEEE membership. It's a *lot* of money ($250AU P/A). I would think that the IEEE would suffer greatly when people such as myself fail to renew if this content becomes free.
This question is hardly unique to the IEEE, all of science publication has been wrestling with these issues for about the last ten years in earnest (esp. since the widespread adoption of the net with viable mechanisms for scientific content delivery (html sucks for equations, but things like pdf make for easy distribution and consumption of papers and paper-like content)). Unfortunately, no good answers have been arrived at that I'm aware of. The professionals in the field want to publish in prestigous journals for their reputations, journals become prestigous in part through extensive peer-review processes and widespread publication, and all that takes time/staff/money. There have been some efforts and opening this process up, spurred by the high costs of institutional subscriptions (like, 20k+ USD per year for some of the chemistry journals I follow :P), but as yet I'm unaware of much adoption because, as mentioned above, an article in "foo.org" is not held in the same weight as one in, say, JACS. It's sort of a self-perpetuating cycle driven by social factors that will be very difficult to fix with technology (esp. given how very set in their ways most of the scientific community is... and I say this as a scientist).
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Positive and negative feedback needs to come from the output end to get useful results. Feed-forward from the input just creates instability. Early rocket pioneers found that out, which is why Goddard had an engine at the top, and von Braun had to develop complex gyro control systems.
There is an existing model for making access more open while preserving the useful feedback from readers - public libraries. Money goes from the state to authors based on demand for the books.
Imagine the public library which would result from the authors paying for inclusion. Come to think of it we are back to my doormat. I need to go throw away the junk mail and local politician's drivel now so I can open the door to get out to buy some coffee. Anyone have a shovel?
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Why isn't anyone talking about ADs ?. They are the natural revenue for an online magazine ?. Or maybe advertisements bring in an unwanted commercial touch to this ?.
Of course ADs are not always that forthcoming. But I guess well placed book ads would be enough to solve this problem.
And lastly, why not pick a public sponsor ?. Someone like IBM could sponsor this whole thing without a dent in the budget. Or you could ask for the public to mirror it - if the bandwidth is the real issue (of course, nothing says "COOL" as much as a local mirror of IEEE at your Uni LAN).
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I'm a IEEE member and they send me so much paper it's downright embarassing. For an organization that should be leading the way into the future, I don't know why they insist on littering my mailbox with so much newsprint and so many envelopes stuffed with important notices about the myriad of ways to spend hundreds of dollars on different stingily selected slices of content.
I worked on a project once where we cooperated with a science journal. They told us that 80% of their costs were in production and distribution of paper. If they could do everything electronically, they could have eliminated that 80%. So my suggestion would be that IEEE do exactly that. Eliminate the paper. It's not like they are going to have to spend more to ramp up a web site with electronic versions of the content, because they already have that entire framework in place. If anything, their current web site is too complicated, and could be simplified (and made cheaper to operate) by eliminating a lot of the built-in toll booths.
Advertising and product placement.
"This cable specification brought to you by Belkin, the choice of the home user"
"Required test equipment: Craftsman digital multimeter model no..."
"Why not take a break from reading this specification and enjoy a cool frappacino - there's probably a Starbucks within 100 yards anyway"
With popups and banner ads! The Internet was raised on these mediums so they must still work. Also, with all those words, think how good AdSense would work!
_ WEATHER_ON_YOUR_COMPUTER_WHILE_NAKED_STRIPPERS_DAN CE_ON_YOUR_DESKTOP!" prompts and they would be rolling in the dough!
Toss in a couple "CLICK_YES_TO_USE_THIS_SITE_FOR_FREE_AND_GET_FREE
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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In my humble opinion, they don't need to open up their library to everyone. Sure, it is useful, but it is mostly useful for a certain technical and professional crowd. This is not a library that the majority of the public will care about. Those for whom this library is relevant should afford to pay their IEEE membership costs, as $250 p/a is not much compared to many other disciplines and professions. Those in Academia such as students can use their Academic libraries; the IEEE does not need to subsidize Academic institutions and education.
This is more likely to be something people use once in a while. I avoided it at university because I could be bothered to go to the library, where I could read journals for free. But if the articles where much cheaper, I probably would have indulged, and I would probably still be reading them now that I don't have that library access... Just a thought.
In order to gain access to publish, require the authors to participate (no pay) in the peer review process much like moderators on Slashdot (but more formalized). Then have a meta peer review process to back that up. You get free peer reviewing by requiring authors to do some of that to continue to publish. But unlike Slashdot, the mod points would go to verified degreed people in academic or other research areas who would be selected first early access to do the reviews. When an article is submitted, distribute it to randonly selected reviewers. Then if it's not completely shot down, follow up with more review cycles until the reviewer sample size gives a good ranking.
Do the actual distribution via BitTorrent, with the article in the clear, but cryptographically signed by the prestigious journal. The journal's web site would have the abstracts, links, and public key.
It's not totally paid for this way, but the cost of distribution gets covered, and peer reviewers come free.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
How are we supposed to come up with a good solution if we don't even know the scope of the problem?
ie:How much money are we talking about here?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Dear IEEE,
Please don't look to advertising.
Thanks,
A random IEEE member.
---
IEEE has a reputation of impartiality. If they do open their doors to ad revenue their integrity will be questioned. The last thing we need is corporate sponsored standards and reference material which shut out competitors and amateurs.
Even if they do stay impartial, they will be questioned and it will lead to a whole quagmire of politics. It is inevitable.
I know this comment doesn't help much, but I had to say it. I commend the IEEE for trying to make reference material avilable free, but please think about this. Anyway, I don't think IEEE will read this, so bleh.
StrayByte.Net
...The author pays a bit over $100 a page for the major US journals. You budget for it in your grants. Still, we have subscriptions at huge cost, despite very common free preprint servers. My colleagues in many other fields don't pay, and the universities do. Yes, I agree there should be a better model.
Professor of Astronomy, Author of Spider Star & Star Dragon (Tor)
The professionals in the field want to publish in prestigous journals for their reputations, journals become prestigous in part through extensive peer-review processes and widespread publication, and all that takes time/staff/money.
It takes time but not money. In my field (CS/AI) the reviewers, editors and authors aren't paid for their work. And they do wonder where all the money goes that publishers collect.
As for adoption, it's certainly happened. Two examples: Journal of AI Research (www.jair.org) and Journal of Machine Learning Research (www.jmlr.org) are both prestigious web-published journals, with citation statistics at the top of the field.
Being published in a web journal is not the same as throwing a paper up on your web site. Papers still go through an extensive review and editing process.
In the end, it's the reviewers and editors who determine the quality of a journal, not the publisher.
In terms of fairness, I think getting people who cite an IEEE paper to pay something to the IEEE would be a reasonable solution since they have clearly benefited from reading that article.
But of course, it is not easy to implement. It is also a negative incentive to citing that paper which is bad since the one thing authors want is to be cited.
Such an issue is a common one:
The non-profiting resource is obviously of great benefit to society and the country at large, helping to provide a poole of knowledgable people who can help society in this field.
Just like with all the similar things which serve society but do not make a direct profit the federal government, and therefor indirectly everyone, should contribute to maintaining a resource which is indirectly of use to everyone.
In the field of AI we have at least two highly respected journals which do not have paper editions (even though libraries can buy bound collections of papers on a yearly basis) and which make their content available for free to everyone:
Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research and
Journal of Machine Learning Research
This works because an academic journal does not really have any expenses for peer-review. Academics review for free as part of their job - it gives status to review for a prestigious journal. If you don't have any costs for editing and printing a paper edition, you suddenly have almost no operating expenses at all. Cost of bandwith is negligible. A typical research paper in pdf format is a 100k download, so any one of us could operate one of those servers from our home. Furthermore, the cost of bandwith is continually decreasing.
In sum, I don't understand what the IEEE is whining about. Let those who want a journal on paper pay for the paper, and let the rest of us have it for free!
IEEE, has already gone "Green" -- i.e., it is among the 78% of publishers (publishing 92% of the 8950 journals surveyed to date) who have already given each of their authors the green light to provide open access to their own articles, if they wish, by self-archiving them in their own institutional OA archives. IEEE is now contemplating also going "Gold" -- i.e., becoming one of the 5% of publishers that are open-access publishers, making all of their articles open-access (and many of them recovering their costs by charging the author-institutions for publication by the article instead of charging the user-institutions for access by the journal or article). Going Gold is not without an element of risk, so IEEE are to be highly commended if they actually decide to try it, but let us not foget that, being already green, IEEE are already on the side of the angels! It is the authors (and their institutions and funders) -- i.e., the research community itself, the very ones for whom the benefits of open access are being sought -- who are to blame for not yet going when the going is Green, by self-archiving their own articles so as to make them open access. Relief may be on the way there too, however, in the form of a proposed new recommendation to the 55 major research institutions worldwide who have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access" that they should now implement an explicit Institutional Self-archiving Policy of providing open access to their own research article output. (A summary will appear in the March issue of D-lib magazine.) Two recent international surveys have found that whereas most authors do not yet self-archive, 79% will do so willingly, but only if and when they are required to do so by their employers and/or funders.
Alright I know alot of people are going to be suggesting hokey solutions where no real person pays (or at least no one they know). Yet someone needs to pay for these journals and while editors and reviewers are likely to work very cheaply if not for free many of these journals need some staff and some money to encourage reviewers and boards. Unfortunatly, if we keep using the current system alot of people don't get any access (they aren't subscribers) yet no one benefits. The authors would like to reach a larger audience and it doesn't cost ieee anything for them to read the magazine either (at least not more than banner ads bring in).
This is essentially a tragedy of the commons problem. Imagine what would happen if we tried to pay for national parks and forests entierly via usage fees and if you didn't pay for your camp permit or wilderness pass you couldn't use the area. Now perhaps a few tourist destinations might be accesible because of volume but probably the high prices would mean only the wealthy and dedicated could afford to use the forests and everyone loses. In short the private property model is really great at distributing goods which aren't duplicable (marginal cost is a large fraction of total cost per item) but goods which can be shared like parks and information is better supported by the people as a whole.
How could such a system work? Simple, an internet version of the library tax used in uk and canada. Basically the government or sub contracted companies (this could be competitive and you could probably download from amazon and have just as much privacy protection as now) would record how frequent journals/books/whatever are used (and perhaps an estimation of how useful it was by the reader) and then compensate the author proportionatly.
I know the standard reaction is to think this couldn't possible hand out money in the 'right' amounts. Yet this is just because you are stuck in the mindset that this is really property. There are no right amounts, or if there are we are far from them. When the most valuable and time consuming works (technical works, textbooks, high art) are generally the least profitable while novels make tons of money. In short we don't need to be very accurate to make sure books and journals get written just so long as we are in the ballpark of more readers=more money.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I dont know how many people here feel some kind of a Deja vu!
The U.S. Congress set us on this road in 1982, when it created a centralized appellate court for patent cases called the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. A decade later, Congress ordered that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), which up until then had been funded by tax revenues, instead fund itself through application and maintenance fees. Both changes were described as administrative and procedural rather than substantive.
From my thought store
So, it is certainly a bad idea!
Some improvements over the existing system should be thought about, rather than this.
Senthil
has been discussed before.
Steve Harnad posted this to describe the problem. Text reproduced below.
[The following concerns refereed research report publication.]
What is wrong with the following picture?
(1) A brand-new PhD recipient proudly tells his mother he has just
published his first article. She asks him how much he was paid for
it. He makes a face and tells her "nothing," and then begins a long
complicated explanation.
(2) A fellow-researcher at that same university sees a reference to
that same article. He goes to their library to get it: It's not
subscribed to here; can't afford that journal; subscription budget
already overspent.
(3) An undergraduate, same university, sees the same article
cited on the Web; clicks on it. The publisher's website demands a
password: only paid subscribing institutions can have access.
(4) The undergraduate loses patience, gets bored, and clicks on
napster to grab an MP3 file of his favorite bootleg music CD to
console him in his sorrows.
(5) Years later, the same PhD is being considered for tenure; his
publications are good, but they're not cited enough; they have not
made enough of a research impact. Tenure denied.
(6) Same thing happens when he tries to get a research grant: his
research findings have not had enough of an impact: not enough
researchers have read and cited them.
(7) He decides to write a book instead. Publisher declines to
publish it: It wouldn't sell enough copies because not enough
universities have enough money to pay for it -- their purchasing
budgets are tied up paying for their inflating annual journal
subscription costs.
(8) He tries to put his articles up on the Web, free for all, to
increase their impact; his publisher threatens to sue him for
violation of copyright.
(9) He asks his publisher who the copyright is intended to protect.
(10) His publisher replies: You!
What is wrong with this picture? (And why is the mother of the PhD
whose give-away work people cannot steal, even though he wants them
to, in the same boat as the mother of the recording artist whose
non-give-away work they can and do steal, even though he does not
want them to?)
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
The review process is by no means free. The peer reviewers have to be specialists in the field the article discusses. Sometimes, there are only two or three such peers world wide and they are just as hard working as the author. If you want them to sit down and think about an article they didn't write for a day, you have to pay them.
Apart from that: "Author pays" is a really bad method. It keeps young authors from publishing frequently (since they're on a budget).
Face it: For a peer-review process, some money is needed. It either comes from the author, which is bad, see above; from the readers, which is still better, since Universities -- the mayor subscribers -- have more money than the individual author; or from some third party, which is always a problem since it raises the problem of this third entities interests in publications. Example: Who is going to pay for a journal of Egyptian Studies, as opposed to one for Silicon Technology?
The system of peer-reviewed publication lies at the heart of the modern scientific community. Sure, it's not perfect. The huge number of contemporary journals is a big problem for university libraries. But I don't see a better solution for the moment. But it would help if the journals would cut costs by, e.g., publishing only electronically, although I don't know how much of the price of the journal is actually accountable to printing.
It might seem to the uninitiated that societies like the IEEE are unbiased on the issue of open access, but they are about as biased about open access as Microsoft is about Linux. The fact is, while being "non-profit", these societies (and particularly their staff), make tons of money off journals. There was a a scandal recently when the head of a similar society, the ACS, was shown to be making $750,000/year. Therefore, they spread FUD about open access. They don't care about science; it's the bottom line they care about, and open access threatens those cushy salaries.
The standard myths about open access just aren't true. There aren't people doing worthwhile science that can't afford to publish it. Even in the third world scientists are supported by grants. Author payment is the logical way to fund scientific publication. Heck, the IEEE *itself* charges page fees (basically the same thing) for papers published in its conference proceedings (and then turns around and charges twice!) . And it's not like the authors have to pay out of their own pockets -- just like attending conferences, grants can be used. And it's a trivial part of the grant. Typical grants these days are hundreds of thousands of dollars or even millions. The $1500 needed to publish a paper in PLoS is a trivial cost compared to the cost of doing science (such as equipment, supplies for experiments, and paying grad student and postdoc salaries). What isn't trivial is the millions of dollars a year a typical university has to pay in journal subscriptions to "closed access" journals. The universities win with open access , the public wins (the get to see what their taxes pay for), the scientists win (more people read their papers) . The only losers are the publishers of closed access journals. Boo hoo hoo!
The truth is, many folks sitting on these boards are locked into a mindset--Print Article in Prestigious Journal = Credibility++, Electronic Article in Online Prestigious Journal = 0. Nevermind that by the time an article hits print, it's a year or more old (in some cases, two years old!) and, in a field like IT, probably obsolete. Thus, the print journals serve as a sort of "fossil record" of where the field has been, but it's also useful for professors hoping to move up the er..Ivory ladder. I think this problem will go away eventually as the old codgers die off, but professors are infamous for refusing to retire, and senility is something of a virtue, it seems.
As far as what IEEE is looking at now, I'd say the best thing is to do what others have already suggested and allow others to mirror the site. Perhaps they could release everything under a CC license. I agree that editing is important; however, there is an important source of revenue already in place (conference fees, membership dues). Despite what one person says, many, many people aren't going to cancel their membership just because they can get the articles for free. They already have to pay a large fee to present/attend the conferences, and membership looks good (and is even essential) on many CVs. Finally, most professors are pretty damn ethical (almost to a fault). They'll want to support their professional organization, and many feel strongly about making their articles freely available anyway (after all, they don't get paid!)
Many print journals already charge authors steep publication fees. This is especially apparent in the medical field. We're talking about authors shelling out hundreds and possibly even thousands of dollars to an editor before she'll publish the article. Aw, poor author, right? Actually, it doesn't matter one whit to the author, because the publication expenses are covered by the grant he received to conduct the research. The same is most often true for his journal subscriptions and membership dues.
Many journals are subsidized by universities, others are subsidized by private or corporate donors. Plenty of journals also have advertisements, though these ads are much lower-key than magazine ads.
Chances are, IEEE could garner support from universities, corporations, private donors, author payments, and advertisers with no problem.
While the copy editors may be bad, and while the majority of the reviewing is done by peers, there is still very important jobs that you need good top-level editors for:
- Throwing out the complete garbage, crackpottery, etc: seeing if the author exists, is at a real institution, etc.
- Finding people to peer-review the article. This is not easy; it's often difficult to find 3 or 4 good people in the right sub-field who don't actually have a connection to the work. This means the editor has to understand the article to begin with.
- Dealing with fraud, plagurism, etc. Not easy.
You want smart, well-educated people for these jobs. And then you still need copy editors, layout, indexing, administration, etc etc, which don't come free.
Yes, you still need money to run a reputable journal. But it's also clear that it's time for a change, and that the subscription model simply doesn't work very well anymore. What we really need is someone to fund the peer-review process, and then web-based citations, indexing, archiving, and retrieval of articles.
Unfortunately it's not that simple. Many would argue that the 'user pay' systems doesn't work. First, much of the research published is paid for by government grants via taxes, so taxpayers are paying for the "privilege" of reading about research they already paid for themselves. Second, the goal of disseminating research results is the progress of society, so that people can learn from each other's work. With the user pays approach, only the rich or "connected" (e.g., paid for by employer) can afford it. Libraries are an option for some, but not everybody lives near a university, not every university offers public access, and libraries obviously don't have all journals. My former university library stopped getting many journals (too expensive) and instead joined a program where you could order in articles from other libraries for free, as long as you were a grad student at the university.
I'm not sure there is an ideal model for every case. I know I wouldn't have even a fraction of the papers I've read now if I had to pay for them myself. Citeseer has been a big help, and they seem to get by ok. Of course they don't publish their own (just a search for papers with links) and they get funded through sponsors, grants, donations, and have volunteers.
Just opening the coffers is not practical, I know, I used to work on journals for the American Chemical Society. Some have said electronic submission and distribution to reviewers cost nothing, but these are custom made programs that handle this, and what about copy editing, layout, art, graphics. You won't believe the number of low res pictures researchers think can be published. So what to do. There should tiers of subscriptions. For instance, I would love to read papers on certain subjects, so for $5 a month let me look at 2 papers from Journal X (online only). That way, when a article on thin films shows up in JACS (Journal of the American Chemical Society), I could sign up for, inexpensive, occasional access and be happy. But for langumire (which is about films) I could buy the expensive all access pass since I know I would use it. Bundling these would also be good. Say your member ship in ACS or IEEE would give you access to 10 articles a month in whatever journal online. Sounds good to me, would solve some of the problems I believe. Also authors should have unlimited access for ever on their own papers. One more suggestion, if the government really wants articles from gov funded research freely available, I say let the original, un peer reviewed paper be free, and get the final one payed for. Then people woudl see how much work is involved in making them into publishble papers. Also, this might improve the quality of papers submitted. rambled on enough.... Journals are publishing departments outsourced so professors don't have to know how to do it. Its cheaper, more poeple can afford it, and maybe more people will subscribe to journals that are slightly outside their area of expertise to see the
- there is still very important jobs that you need good top-level editors for:
These are all things which could be checked very quickly without any editor by peer reviewers.- Throwing out the complete garbage, crackpottery, etc: seeing if the author exists, is at a real institution, etc.
- - Finding people to peer-review the article. This is not easy; it's often difficult to find 3 or 4 good people in the right sub-field who don't actually have a connection to the work. This means the editor has to understand the article to begin with.
The process of finding independent peer-reviewers could itself be well handled by peer review.- - Dealing with fraud, plagurism, etc. Not easy.
Dealing with fraud, plagiarism is the easy part -- identifying it when it occurs is the hard part and editors are usually not the ones who identify fraud and plagiarism - it's peers who spot almost all such problems.Scroogle
IEEE clearly makes a big deal of archiving, pretending that it is a very challenging and expensive endevour. But I suspect that if magazines released their works to the public without restrictive copyrights (basically releasing them into public domain) after recoupering somehow their initial costs, then quickly a host of independent archievers would emerge, just like it happened with Wikipedia. These archievers would then take care of distribution, backups, data migration, offline distribution, interface innovations, etc.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
The perception of the journal business as a parasitic racket is bolstered by the phenomenon of authors having to pay per-page charges to get articles published in these very expensive publications. Reminds me of the pharmaceutical industry...
Yes, there is a need for someone, somehow, to finance the organized peer-review and publication of scientific articles. However, I flatly refuse to accept the proposition that $1500/year subscriptions and author-paid page charges are a good way to do this. Free interchange of information is essential to science; academic publishers on the present model, however, are NOT.
The IEEE, based on my reading of the article in the dead-tree newsletter, is worried that they'll be innovated out of the academic publishing business, and they cannot imagine what will supplant it. This is a frankly bizarre attitude for an organization dedicated to technical advancement.
Of course, as an IEEE member, I've seen a great deal of bizarre behavior from IEEE HQ.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Have the first person who "must read it" pay $100, the second $50, then $25, $15, $15 - about $200 net after credit card processing costs. Or whatever rate they figure out will be most likely to cover their costs.
If there's no one out there that needs the article enough to pay $100, it probably wasnt worth writing. If an author thinks what they've written is important enough, they can pay the "opening cost" to get it available for free.
Finally, IEEE should encourage companies to sponsor articles - it's a cheap way to get their name embedded into the text of an article forever, winning a little goodwill from everyone who reads the article for free.
Several journals are already implementing Open Access with different levels of success. I develop and publish a relatively successful online Open Access journal, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (apologies for the plug), and we use the author-pays model based on a $750US fee to cover (most of) the costs. Often this amount can be written into or otherwise covered by a grant supporting the research in question.
We also have additional sources of revenue, including advertising (albeit very little), and one of the most promising areas is what would traditionally be called "value-added" content. While the full-text of all articles is freely available, "extra" things like PDF versions, on-demand printed versions, etc. are on a fee/membership basis. This seems to work quite well in covering costs while not restricting access. As well, other journals such as BMJ use time-delayed access (ie. articles older than 6 months become open), which is just another way of creating "premium" content. Another interesting publisher is PLoS, who have several resources on the costs of OA publishing.
As some have said in other threads, the main cost is in the actual process of reviewing/copyediting/proofing, not the actual hosting/bandwidth. Open Source journal publication software such as OJS is lessening this barrier, as are other tools. For example, we use OpenOffice to convert articles to the NLM XML schema, automating XML/layout editing and decreasing the cost. By finding alternative, "non-traditional" sources of revenue (like tiered access/content), and using Open Source tools to simplify and automate the publishing process, bringing the overall cost of online academic publishing down to a level where Open Access is cheap is already being realized.
As an editor, you'd think I'd know better.
--- Of course, good journals reject a lot of papers, but the journal editors themselves do not review any of them---
Sorry, you're wrong. I'm an editor with a scientific journal. I read (or one of my co-editors reads) every single paper that comes across our doorstep. We have to make a decision on every single submission--does it go out to reviewers, or is it rejected unreviewed. As I asked before, if a journal is rejecting 90% of submissions unreviewed (which is a solid number for a decent journal), that means if you eliminate the editors, your workload just went up 10X per journal you review for. Do you have that kind of spare time?
---I am a research scientist and I know what the workload of reviewing papers is like; most of my colleagues spend on average at most a few hours per week on reviewing activities---
So you have 20-30 hours to spare? What about the time you'll be spending finding reviewers for papers, or chasing down late reviews? Now how about the time refereeing between authors and reviewers as to what changes are reasonable to request? Don't forget all the time you'll be spending proofreading and copyediting (nomenclature alone is gonna take you a while).
Sorry you won't be getting any research done.
---I expect all scientific publishers will eventually be forced to adapt to the inevitable change to various forms of open-access publishing, whether they like it or not, because it is being demanded by the end users (the researchers) who, afterall, provide the publishers with free raw materials and free reviewing labour---
1) I think we're more likely to see a compromise, something in between like what's happening now where journals make papers free to access after 6 months. You can't replace a successful system until you have something else that will work as well. So far, open access does not work as well.
2) In my field, it's only a tiny vocal minority who really seems to care about such things. If you asked most scientists if they'd rather have everything be free, sure, they'd like that. But they're not adamant about it, nor are they spending a lot of their time worrying about it. They've got more important things to do with their time, like their careers. It doesn't make much difference to them whether they're going to have to spend $3000 to subscribe to a journal, or spend that same $3000 to get a paper published in an open access journal. They're out $3000 either way.
--- It may come as a shock to some publishers, but that will not change the outcome or the reviewing workload one iota.---
But it will drive the smaller journals out of business, and drive more power into the hands of the big conglomerates who can weather the storm.