Evidence Based Library and Information Practice

Editorial

The Costs of Open Access

Lorie Kloda

Editor-in-Chief

Assessment Librarian, McGill University Library

Montreal, Quebec, Canada

2015 Kloda. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons‐Attribution‐Noncommercial‐Share Alike License 2.5 Canada (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/ca/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly attributed, not used for commercial purposes, and, if transformed, the resulting work is redistributed under the same or similar license to this one.

Since its inception almost 10 years ago, the EBLIP journal has been open access. Yet, it seems that open access continues to be an important, and possibly controversial, topic in scholarly communications and within library and information practice. Though many open access journals have emerged (and some even folded) in the past decade, I get the impression that librarians, scholars, and publishers continue to discuss and debate the same issues surrounding open access.

EBLIP is a gold open access journal according to the definition used by Suber (2015). This means that there are no article processing charges (APCs) that authors are required to pay for their submission to be published. In fact, according to Suber’s research, most open access journals do not charge author fees, which means they employ a business model whereby the costs to produce the publication are covered in some other way. Recently, Crawford (2015) noted in his study of journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals that only 4% of library science open access articles appear in journals that have APCs. In other words, gold open access is the norm in open access publishing, and especially in the field of librarianship. Nevertheless, discussion continues about the sustainability of open access (see most recently, for example, Banks, 2015).

I like to assume that readers of this journal, or at least long-time readers, are aware of how the journal operates. I can understand that those new to the journal, or considering submitting a manuscript here for the first time, will have some questions. But though our website clearly does not make any mention of APCs, I still regularly receive inquiries about fees. I would like to take the opportunity to clear up these questions for current, and hopefully future readers.

The way that EBLIP functions is based entirely on voluntary work of a group of professionals – librarian and information professionals and professors in library and information studies. These individuals volunteer their time, knowledge, and skills to keep this journal in motion. EBLIP is published quarterly and has disseminated four issues every year since 2006. These issues are typically published online on the 15^th of March, June, September and December. We have never missed an issue, and several issues include an additional feature section with supplemental papers on a particular theme or related to a recent conference.

The journal is published using the Open Journal System platform, developed by the Public Knowledge Project, and is hosted by the University of Alberta’s Learning Services. The journal relies on the Editorial Team, consisting of editors, copyeditors, and editorial advisors, as well as the peer reviewers and writing assistants, to manage publications from submission to final layout and publication. None of these individuals are paid a salary or receive any money for completing work related to EBLIP. Rather, these individuals work at various institutions that allow them the flexibility to make a contribution to research and scholarship, or else they contribute their personal time as part of their commitment to the journal.

There are various models for sustaining open access publications, and no single model suits the needs of all journals, even within library and information practice. EBLIP, however, has its costs absorbed from various institutions and individuals so that authors can focus on the quality of their submissions.

References

Banks, M. (2015). Open access publishing: What it is and how to sustain it. American Libraries, 46(9/10), 58-61. Retrieved from http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/

Crawford, W. (2015, May 17). OA articles involving APCs: More complete 2014 table. [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://walt.lishost.org/2015/05/oa-articles-involving-apcs-more-complete-2014-table/

Suber, P. (2015, July 7). Open access overview. Retrieved from http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm