PeerJ, A New Open Access Megajournal Launches 61
Mirk writes "Academic researchers want to make their papers open access for the world to read. If they use traditional publishers like Elsevier, Springer or Taylor & Francis, they'll be charged $3000 to bring their work out from behind the paywall. But PeerJ, a new megajournal launched today and funded by Tim O'Reilly, publishes open access articles for $99. That's not done by cutting corners: the editorial process is thorough, and they use rigorous peer-review. The cost savings come from running lean and mean on a born-digital system. The initial batch of 30 papers includes one on a Penn and Teller trick and one on the long necks of dinosaurs."
$99 entitles you to publish an article a year, for life. $300 nets you unlimited articles published per year.
Re:Charging authors is not much better... (Score:4, Interesting)
hundred bucks isn't that much though, if others will consider this a "real" journal.
anyone can publish anything with practically no costs right now as well.
if the paper is really groundbreaking that would be enough, to upload it even on pastebin. very few papers are that groundbreaking though.
Re:Charging authors is not much better... (Score:4, Interesting)
Right, it can be seen as part of your task as an academic. The extra income I get from teaching is very little, but it is part of what an academic should do. Reviewing does not give me money at all (although it marginally publicizes my name), so it's also part of my tasks as an academic.