Late Friday, I took a call from a Daily Tar Heel reporter doing a story on Open Access journals. I chatted a bit and pointed him to others who know more, including but especially Jeff Pomerantz who helped organize the Convocation on Scholarly Publishing here a couple of months back. We both wrote about the Convocation here (me) and here (Jeff).

Here’s a clip from the article which takes what I said, in portions, and at least makes me interesting. Perhaps more interesting than I deserve.

“You don’t have to be a Marxist to figure out that the workers are getting screwed,” said Paul Jones, a clinical professor in the schools of Information and Library Science and Journalism and Mass Communication.

“If I was a publisher and I could say it with a straight face, I would say I add value at every step.”

A paper written by Sarah Michalak, head University librarian, and Research and Special Projects Librarian Judith Panitch states that the cost of physics journals has risen 36 percent in the last five years to an average cost of $2,543 per subscription.

Such numbers make Jones a proponent of open-access publishing. He said he hopes it will force the major journals to be more reasonable in their pricing.

I said that scholars must join (or feel like they must join) the scholarly societies that publish the journal, in many cases they must pay a page fee to publish (or even to be reviewed), they pay again for the journal and/or their library pays for the journal, then they pay again to use the articles in their classes. You don’t have to be a Marxist…

Jeff writes about his experience as well.