Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mcmillan" data-source="post: 9687194" data-attributes="member: 6681949">You are coming off as weirdly demanding that people have a debate for your benefit when Staffan said he wasn’t an expert on the topic. I am jumping in as someone that was also rubbed the wrong way with the initial comment of “open access BS” which came off as dismissive of the concept as a whole but the follow up seems more reasonable in objecting to how access has been implemented than in the goal itself. I agree that expecting authors to support the publication costs hasn’t kept up with actual costs while also placing more burdens on researchers (especially at places like my small undergrad school where funding is already tight). However subscription based publications have also responded in ways creating additional problems. Seeing publications lowering standards trying to compete with low quality predatory publications (which most academics I’ve talked with also look down on)  also contributes to devaluing the work of journals as people wonder why they are paying subscription costs for lower quality. We’ve also seen issues with publishers leveraging ownership of large numbers of journals to do things like bundle high reputation subscriptions with less desired journals (again a concern for schools like ours that have to be judicious in how they spend limited resources) which can also be seen as predatory.</blockquote>