Rebels hold their own in journal price war : Article : Nature (Subscription or site licence required.)

In a News story in the current issue of Nature, “Rebels hold their own in journal price war”, Declan Butler looks at what has happened since last August, when the entire editorial board of the Elsevier journal Topology quit in a row over pricing. Now the board is setting up a non-profit competitor to be published by the London Mathematical Society. The Journal of Topology, announced last week, will launch next January and will cost US$570 per year, compared with Topology’s $1,665.

Over the past eight years, continues the News story, around a dozen cheap or open-access journals have been created to compete directly with an expensive commercial journal, many by editorial boards that had quit the original publication in protest. (See the News story for a table of these journals.) But do the cheaper journals fare better than their rivals?

As far as scientific credibility is concerned, the answer is often yes — many of the challengers have obtained impact factors (a measure of the citations its papers receive) higher than their competitor. Nevertheless, the rebel journals often get poor support from libraries, with subscriptions being an uphill battle for them.

Source: Nature 445, 351 (25 January 2007) | doi:10.1038/445351a; Published online 24 January 2007.