So you may already know my views on Open Publishing and the ACM Authorizer Service; and as promised the ACM has some exciting news about Open Publishing in different forms. As you may know I’m Chair of ACM SIGWEB and as such twice a year I attend the Special Interest Group Governing Board meeting. This time there was plenty of discussion about open publishing and we’ve just received a quick summary of what happened at the Pubs Board and Council Meetings.

Last week I was talking about Deep Accessibility, and trying to define what it might be (who knows if I’m right). I said that in reality I thought it was pretty difficult to create a kind of Deep Accessibility, but that it was possible and necessary, and it was not just about disability but about all of us being able to access the information and functionality as we want or need.

The I think you will agree there are many problems with both the open access and closed access models of academic publishing. The closed access model forces the reader to pay (often within the region of US$25) per article, while the open model forces the author to pay (often within the region of US$1500) per article. The ACM seems to have found an excellent middle ground with their new Author-Izer service.

I was recently offered the ability to publish one of my journal papers in a reputable journal but ‘Open Access’. The facility for me to do this was at the bargain price of $3250. I also considered using PLoS ONE via the public library of science, but at approximately $1000 per article again the price seemed to preclude publication. I understand the rational of open publication but it seems to me at these prices the ‘open’ aspects are not really being transferred to the author, only the reader, and therefore the suggestion of increased citation.