Language barriers --- financial barriers

[John Peterson]

> Bear in mind that although OA is great for the reader, it means the author
> bears the cost of publication.  To have an OA article in a Springer
> journal costs €2000 at the moment.  To have an OA article in the Lancet is
> £400 per page.  PER PAGE!  These prices are typical of the big houses,
> Springer, Elsevier, etc.  But not all journals are this expensive, and it
> does seem possible to run an OA journal publishing business on fees of
> about $400-$500 per article.  Nevertheless, what about academic authors
> who do not have institutional budgets behind them to support their
> publishing?
>

Just a thought: There is already a small, but steadily increasing number
of online, free-access journals for South Asian languages (a number are
listed on my homepage, see below - more suggestions are ALWAYS welcome!).
Would it not be a good idea to expand this type of publishing in general,
in e.g. Classical South Asian studies as well?

BTW: I myself am also involved in one of these more pricey series for
monographs that have been discussed, so I am definitely not pointing
fingers at anyone! But still, at least the journals I am referring to here
are all peer reviewed and receive pretty much the same editing, etc. as
any other comparable printed journal. The benefits are, of course, obvious
- anyone anywhere can print out the articles freely, and since they are
peer reviewed, they have (at least in my opinion) the same high standing
as other journals. This is, incidentally, a growing trend in linguistics
in general, not just South Asian linguistics, and one which I highly
welcome.

I'm not sure whether this can/should be extended to monographs in general,
but at least with respect to journals it is definitely an idea worth
considering. But for journals, it's already proven itself to be a viable
alternative.

Best,

John

-- 
John Peterson
FB 7, Sprachwissenschaft
Universität Osnabrück
Neuer Graben 41
D-49069 Osnabrück
Germany

Telephone: (+49) (0)541-969 4252
Telefax: (+49) (0)541-969 4256
Homepages:
http://www.ling.uni-osnabrueck.de/mitarbeiter/johpeter
http://www.SouthAsiaBibliography.de/