A journal’s editorial board resigns en masse over open access charges. Seems Taylor & Francis wanted $2,995 for an author to make an article open access. For readers unfamiliar with the academic publishing process: the authors aren’t paid for the articles; the editors and referees are paid either nothing or very little; setting the open access fees high ensures that many of the other articles in the same journal won’t be open access, so that libraries will still have to pay for subscriptions to the journal in which the open access paper is published. The journal at the center in this dispute is the Journal of Library Administration – the editorial board members of which know too well how the system works!

According to Morgan Stanley, it’s a very profitable system for the publishers. There are a number of cases, in various academic disciplines, of journals which have broken away from their rapacious publishers. Ted Bergstrom has a list, which is good but looks as if it hasn’t been updated for a few years.