[Aeolun]

Is Nature’s open access fee really that crazy? Last time I checked it was a few thousand dollars.

And it’s paid once, to make the whole thing open perpetually. It certainly seems better than having the people interested in reading it pay $30-40 each.

Of course, this is also based on the few times I’ve heard researchers talk about the ways they could spend their grant money. $2k to Nature sounds like a great deal by comparison.

Note: Worked for Nature in the past.

[_yb2s]

It’s over $12k, which seems insane, and is 5-10x what other journals charge.

These journals are a racket… volunteer editors, volunteer reviewers, and thousands for what amounts to PDF hosting… which they also charge every school and library in the world on the other end.

[hx8]

Yes, I wouldn't expect someone to pay a few thousand dollars to Nature when PubMed will do the same job for free. I think the role of academic journals is decreasing as open and tech-savvy solutions to information sharing and screening are being deployed.

[Aeolun]

Depends, PubMed will happily take any article. I know for a fact that Nature does it’s own independent review of whatever is published (or did, years ago anyway). It’s not a guarantee of course, there’s been enough instances of review failure even in Nature, but it’s not the same as free access.

Ultimately what you are paying for is curation.