The price of academic publishing

I’ve written previously about the importance of publishing in science and academia, and the proliferation of dodgy online journals that exist to harvest authors’ fees. In contrast to these dead-end dubiously refereed publications, high-quality online-only journals such as PLoS ONE are becoming the future of academic publishing and promise a huge democratisation of knowledge. As Craig Lambert writes in ‘The “Wild West” of Academic Publishing’, charging authors a reasonable fee but readers nothing inverts the traditional model in which publishing companies charge university libraries exorbitant prices and thereby restrict access to readers affiliated with rich institutions. Read Craig’s article (Harvard Magazine, Jan-Feb 2015) here.