Ouch. Open Access, yes, but...

I had originally planned to share a Call for Submissions with you here today - for a special issue of a magazine about digital cultural heritage.

Information about this came to me via an e-mail, and so I clicked the link for the "learn more" (even though the mail seemed to have listed everything), and then I scrolled down a bit, and then I found this small note about the APC. That's the "article processing fee". Which, in that case, is the utter pittance of approximately, converted, 1550 Euro.

Ouch.

So. Here's what I think: I'm all for open access and free access to knowledge, research, and research articles. I also know that there's some things that can be done for free, and some things that can't be done for free. I do firmly believe that if someone is spending their workdays doing work, the money that comes out of said work should be enough to live on. So yes, paying for work done on editing, layouting, and (if it's a physical thing) printing and the paper - that is something that has to happen.

However... a lot of the academic journals will ask a really hefty price for reading them, which in a lot of cases can (or will) only be paid by institutions. If I'm charged 30+ € for a 30-year-old article (to download the pdf, mind you, not a physical copy) my understanding of the pricing is somewhat challenged. I would have more understanding if I knew that the paper authors and the peer reviewers would actually see some of that money... but nope. Academic articles, and academic review work, is entirely unpaid.

Some journals have started to offer Open Access publishing in the past few years. The money, in those cases, is then asked from the authors of the papers - called "open access fee" or "article processing fee" or something along those lines. Yes, there are costs to publishing, even if it's only online and there are no printing costs... but really? I'm not able, nor willing, to pay more than a thousand Euros to publish an article.

There's so much public money wasted on so many stupid things. Sigh. Some of it would be well spent on making research more accessible to everyone...