Not as well submerged in this subject as you (and as a non-academic who frequently bounces off JSTOR paywalls while trying to learn about stuff, or to verify unsupported statements made in the science press or blog posts, would argue strenuously against the "may not be much direct use to the public") but I'll add that the "pay to publish" model is part of the largest open-access journals, too.
I had the same "pay to publish = bad" reaction as you, ysabet, when I first learned that PLoS ONE is pay-to-publish, but academic publishing has a very different set of goals and incentives than the rest of the publication world - the authors have never been meant to be making money directly from their writing - and it actually makes more sense to do pay-to-publish than to make the readers pay, if someone has to.
(Of course the ones that are pay-to-publish and pay-per-view are another kettle of fish entirely. As are many, many other skeevy things that academic publishers have been known to do with regards to money, gatekeeping, intellectual property, academic ethics, etc.)
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2013-01-13 10:03 pm (UTC)Not as well submerged in this subject as you (and as a non-academic who frequently bounces off JSTOR paywalls while trying to learn about stuff, or to verify unsupported statements made in the science press or blog posts, would argue strenuously against the "may not be much direct use to the public") but I'll add that the "pay to publish" model is part of the largest open-access journals, too.
I had the same "pay to publish = bad" reaction as you, ysabet, when I first learned that PLoS ONE is pay-to-publish, but academic publishing has a very different set of goals and incentives than the rest of the publication world - the authors have never been meant to be making money directly from their writing - and it actually makes more sense to do pay-to-publish than to make the readers pay, if someone has to.
(Of course the ones that are pay-to-publish and pay-per-view are another kettle of fish entirely. As are many, many other skeevy things that academic publishers have been known to do with regards to money, gatekeeping, intellectual property, academic ethics, etc.)