[drb493]

Kudos to the editors for taking a stand.

Absurd cost for publications was a major reason I left academia as a postdoc. Senior scientists with large grants and salaries write it off as a business expense but paying 2-3k for a paper is insane for junior staff that are already being underpaid.

Arxiv and opensource publishing options exist. But for neuroscience, the funding and direction of research is implicitly governed by the reviewers and chief editors whom are embedded in these journals. Thus for your work to get exposure and citations it is critical to publish in the given journal for your domain.

Journals have a reciprocal relationship with chief editors in that journals will publish "special" editions essentially allowing the editors to publish their work with their collaborators carte blanche. Switching to an open source model is objectively a better option, but there are entrenched incentives that prohibit this change.

[kelipso]

Salaries and underpaid? Not relevant since no one pays open-access charges with their own money. It always comes from the funding.

[not2b]

It comes out of the grant that also pays salaries, so excessive paper costs might mean that a research group can't afford to pay as many postdocs and grad students.

[bluefirebrand]

Or can't afford to pay the postdocs and grad students they do have what they are worth.

[kevviiinn]

They already don't

[foven]

Absolutely relevant. Had a huge issue with the University recently about being able to publish in a journal because they wouldn't pay the fees - every point at which there can be a problem, there will be.

[kelipso]

So you had issues using your funding to pay for open-access fees. Are you going to use your own money to pay the fees? You are not. You'll just submit the paper as non open-access. So your salary is not relevant here.

[foven]

No, the funding body specifies that all work has to be published as open-access. So if you publish without open access, you are getting yourself into trouble with the funding bodies which is a bad idea.

[infogulch]

I'm struggling to understand what happened from your comments.

So your funding source requires publishing as open access. (This is generally good imo, but details matter and challenges may remain.) But when you tried to publish in your selected journal the university objected... to what exactly? Allocating funds from the grant to pay for the publishing fee? Or did they have to pay out of pocket?

[chkgk]

A funding body grants you money and demands open-access. They often state very clearly that costs for publications (submission or publication fees, open access fees etc) cannot be paid from grant money. Thus, you need another source. The first address is your institute / department / faculty / university. If they decline to pay the open access fee, you are in trouble.

That’s actually common practice in a lot of fields.

[kelipso]

Sure I get all that but you are literally never in any situation going to use your own money to pay for open-access fees. If you actually did that, sure, let me know lol.

[statusfailed]

I (as a Ph.D student) paid open access fees with my own money. Not grant money, my own salary.

[kelipso]

That was a huge mistake on your part. You should never do that. If it's required by your grant, then get them to pay for it. If it's not required, then publish non open-access.