Dive Brief:
- The University of California Press has started two open-access publishing efforts — Collabra for journals and Luminos for detailed single-subject reports.
- For Collabra, there won’t be a subscription fee, but authors will be charged a fee when their articles are ready to publish, covering publication, editing, and reviewing costs, Inside Higher Ed reported.
- Using a pay-it-forward concept, editors and reviewers will be offered the choice of keeping the money or donating it back to the open-access effort or helping authors who can’t afford their fee.
Dive Insight:
The plan is for Luminos to publish about 10 reports in the fall of 2015 and Collabra to begin accepting potential pieces in a few weeks. The cost for processing a Collabra article will be $875, which is considered high by most researchers. Last fall, the university press surveyed researchers in the U.S. and U.K. on the idea for the journal, as well as librarians and other academics, and the respondents helped develop details for the open-access publishing effort. About half of the researchers surveyed said they would keep money paid to them for reviewing an article, with the other half saying they would donate it to their college, library, or back to the fund for authors.