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The time may be right for a grand reshaping of academic publishing, and leaders in physics hope that if their experiment works, other disciplines will follow suit. Here's the pitch. Libraries would stop paying for subscriptions to journals in high-energy physics. Instead, each library or government agency would pay a set amount every year to the new nonprofit group. Each journal publisher would then apply for a portion of that money, submitting a bid spelling out how much it would cost them to review, edit, and publish their articles that year (building in some profit as well). To win a bid, the journals would commit to publishing their articles free online for anyone to see. The amount that each library pays would be determined by the group, based on a formula that took into account how many of each institution's researchers published in the journals.
paoloman (public note) - 2009-02-02 15:16:12