Editor's Virtual Forum: Open Access

We are interested in finding out editors’ views on the various issues documented in Editors’ Update. We’ve created the Editors' Virtual Forum to enable you to have your say. In each issue, we’ll nominate a topic for discussion and ask you to share your thoughts with other editors.

Elsevier is listening to editors' discussion of open-access/author-pays. See the article Open Access: Letter to Editors for more information. What are your views?

Please email your in-depth response to EditorsUpdate@elsevier.com

Reactions will be posted below as well as at the end of the article on Open Access. Each reply published will display the name and journal of the contributor.

NB: Elsevier reserves the right to edit comments.

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Contributions to Editors' Virtual Forum

3. Dr. Gio Gori, Editor-in-chief. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology

It is a silly exercise in political correctness to argue whether the dissemination of scientific information should be a for profit or not for profit enterprise, for the business costs money and someone must pay. Unless manned by unpaid volunteers and served by donated facilities, even a non-profit system would need a cash flow and a tax-hidden "profit" to survive. In this regard the question is what arrangement would be more efficient, and if experience is of any guide, a for profit organization would be preferable.

The current debate has been sparked by the obvious advantages of electronic publication and the several new options for payment that the technology raises. It is also clear that science would benefit if the information were freely available to end-users, and it is predictable that the current hybrid scenario will progressively shift toward such a desirable outcome.

In the end there would be several electronic databases reflecting different publishers, each with its own costs. Only time will tell whether there will be savings or costs compared with the historical way of publishing. What will have to change is the allocation of funds, shifting from library budgets to individual grant allowances, given that the likely efficient solution is to have the authors bear the cost of publishing their findings.

2. Leon Chaitow ND DO, Editor, Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies

The concept of the author paying to be published confuses me, possibly because all the issues have not been fully explained. The questions that I find unanswered as yet include - What would happen in a situation in which peer reviewers were equivocal, and commercial interests prevailed? That this could happen is not in question. How would the published material then be viewed? As reliable, as tainted? And how would the reader know? Confusion remains.

1. Greg Lemke, Editor-in-Chief, Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience

The fundamental issue – not directly addressed in any of these discussions about open access publishing – is whether or not the publication of science should in fact be a for-profit business. Should the dissemination of scientific knowledge be a commercial enterprise? My own answer to this question is no. Scientific publishers should be nonprofit; that is, akin to universities and research institutes – the nonprofit institutions in which scientific research is conducted.