Open Access is Coming soon to Prominent Peer Reviewed Journals

In a move by the editorial staff of Elsevier, a major publisher of many medical and scientific journals, the entire editorial staff revolted at the refusal of the company to allow open access to Lingua.

This could be an opening move to force Elsevier to open access to many of their journals which are supported by subscriptions. Many users can no longer afford the rising subscription fees to their journal catalog. 

The open access model allows anyone, whether an academic or not, to read a journal online for free. Currently, most academic journals are funded by subscriber payments; with open access journals, the model is flipped around, with institutions paying to publish their papers

As Inside Higher Ed reports, the academics who have made Lingua into one of the top journals in its field through their editorial work all gave up their roles after telling Elsevier of the "frustrations of libraries reporting that they could not afford to subscribe to the journal and in some cases couldn't even figure out what it would cost to subscribe.".

The former Editor-in-chief plans to open his own open access journal in lieu of Lingua as a starter. Rooryck said he doesn't expect to earn anything from Glossa, which he hopes to launch early next year, and told Inside Higher Ed: "I'm doing this for purely idealistic reasons." He said that some of his colleagues are talking to editors on other journals, who may follow the example of Lingua, and launch their own open access replacements in preference to working on traditional journals that are increasingly unaffordable even for well-financed libraries.

The open access movement formally began about 15 years ago. Since then, there have been increasing calls from academics and universities to adopt its business model for publishing research results. One reason is that most such work is funded by the taxpayer, so it is unfair to expect people to pay again to read the results of the research when it is published in traditional journals.

The other reason is straight up price-gouging: science publishers have pushed up journal prices to such an extent that many libraries struggle to provide the titles their researchers need. Because of its size and fat profit margins, Elsevier has emerged as a frequent target for open access supporters. In 2012, a site called "The Cost of Knowledge" was set up to encourage academics to boycott Elsevier. Since then, over 15,000 researchers have pledged not to work with the company "unless they radically change how they operate."

This will be a boon to investigators, researchers and students of all disciplines. Elseviers catalog of journals is quite extensive.

A recent investigation of the Elsevier site reveals that Elsevier is already listing a variety of publication options to authors.

Entire editorial staff of Elsevier journalLingua resigns over high price, lack of open access