These so-called Diamond Open Access Journals do not ask for compensation to publish an article, neither from the scientists, nor from the universities. A good thing, says Laurens Kemp, PhD candidate at Clinical Psychology and one of the initiators of the appeal. “The publication fee for an open access article with a publisher with which UM has a contract, may run up to five thousand euro. Worldwide, a total of 1 billion dollars was paid on fees from 2015-2018. Researchers who are not connected to an institute, often can’t afford this. At the same time, a publisher like Elsevier has a profit margin of 37 per cent, that is just crazy.”
Kemp and his fellow organisers have set up a petition; anyone who signs it promises to publish an article through Diamond Open Access at least once in the next five years. “We consciously kept the threshold low. For us it is mainly about showing solidarity among scientists. It is very difficult to bring about change as an individual, but together we are stronger. If five hundred people sign the petition (the counter is currently at 73) we will also publish all the names. That way you can see who is in favour and encourage others.”
It is not the first time that scientists from the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN) are making themselves heard in the open access debate. Last year the entire editorial staff of NeuroImage – the most important journal for imaging neuroscience – quit due to dissatisfaction about the amount that publisher Elsevier asked authors to pay for publishing an open access article. The editors subsequently set up a new open access journal, called Imaging Neuroscience.