<story><title>Royal Astronomical Society: all journals to publish as open access from 2024</title><url>https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-announces-all-journals-publish-open-access-2024</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sega_sai</author><text>This is bad news masquerading as good news.&lt;p&gt;Now they force you to pay 2.3k GBP to publish an article. Previously it was free, unless you wanted it to make it immediately accessible on the website. 
People in astrophysics always did put articles on arxiv.org anyway, so papers were already accessible to everyone (in a non-typeset&amp;#x2F;not-proofread form), but now it will be the same, but everyone will have to pay 2.3 kGBP per paper. 
Also a useful comparison. The subscription to MNRAS for the institution was 6.5 kGBP. So any institution that publishes more than 2 papers a year will pay way more then before. 
Also none of the referees are payed.
Also, some funding agencies (like UK&amp;#x27;s UKRI) prohibit to put page charges in overheads for grants, so I wonder how people are supposed to get the money...&lt;p&gt;To be honest, the natural consequence of this will be that people will stop publishing in MNRAS. There is simply not enough value added in the publication process to justify 2.3k GBP, given that the referees are not payed, the journal is published online only, and the arxiv already provide hosting.&lt;p&gt;Also, this is the case of Royal Astronomical Society (which does a lot of good things: provides grants, fellowships, organizes meetings, gives prizes) of trying to preserve the income stream to fund that. This is wrong, and we should not accept that in my opinion.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>planede</author><text>Even if it eventually gets covered by funding, this is still kind of bad. Who gets to publish is basically decided at funding time, not on merits of a paper.</text></comment>
<story><title>Royal Astronomical Society: all journals to publish as open access from 2024</title><url>https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/news/royal-astronomical-society-announces-all-journals-publish-open-access-2024</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sega_sai</author><text>This is bad news masquerading as good news.&lt;p&gt;Now they force you to pay 2.3k GBP to publish an article. Previously it was free, unless you wanted it to make it immediately accessible on the website. 
People in astrophysics always did put articles on arxiv.org anyway, so papers were already accessible to everyone (in a non-typeset&amp;#x2F;not-proofread form), but now it will be the same, but everyone will have to pay 2.3 kGBP per paper. 
Also a useful comparison. The subscription to MNRAS for the institution was 6.5 kGBP. So any institution that publishes more than 2 papers a year will pay way more then before. 
Also none of the referees are payed.
Also, some funding agencies (like UK&amp;#x27;s UKRI) prohibit to put page charges in overheads for grants, so I wonder how people are supposed to get the money...&lt;p&gt;To be honest, the natural consequence of this will be that people will stop publishing in MNRAS. There is simply not enough value added in the publication process to justify 2.3k GBP, given that the referees are not payed, the journal is published online only, and the arxiv already provide hosting.&lt;p&gt;Also, this is the case of Royal Astronomical Society (which does a lot of good things: provides grants, fellowships, organizes meetings, gives prizes) of trying to preserve the income stream to fund that. This is wrong, and we should not accept that in my opinion.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yaxu</author><text>I disagree, it&amp;#x27;s ridiculous for publicly-funded research to be published behind paywalls, and open access fees are supported by research councils who mandate open access publication anyway. The point of publishing something in a journal is to have people _more_ able to read it, not less!!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s simply not true that UKRI don&amp;#x27;t allow you to charge APCs to grants. I&amp;#x27;ve costed it in to my current grant with no problems. They also provide funds to institutions to support open access publication, that academics without grant funding can access.&lt;p&gt;Generally people without funding support e.g. from &amp;#x27;developing countries&amp;#x27; are able to publish for free via a fee waiver, as the article suggests. This new policy also means they&amp;#x27;re actually able to afford to read the research in the publication they&amp;#x27;re submitting to.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re arguing that the academic commercial publication model makes no sense and is in desperate need of wide-ranging reform, I agree with that. But I think this is a step in the right direction because at least it makes research accessible.</text></comment>