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Even if it eventually gets covered by funding, this is still kind of bad. Who gets to publish is basically decided at funding time, not on merits of a paper.

It makes more sence for taxpayer to pay for publishing of research, than for each of individually to pay for accessing it.

As a general view, I am not sure on the merits of this spesific event.

But also, why are commercial entities reviweing scientific papers and deciding merit?

Are their interests aligned with mine as a tax payer?

Commercial entities are not reviewing papers, are they? Editors and reviewers are not (usually) employed and are certainly not paid for their work.

It was 10+ years ago, but I once saw the amount of money Springer paid my old boss (chair of a department) for being managing editor of a run of the mill low impact journal. He spend maybe 10h per month on it but was paid 1.5x yearly of what I was earning for a full time job.

I disagree, it's ridiculous for publicly-funded research to be published behind paywalls, and open access fees are supported by research councils who mandate open access publication anyway. The point of publishing something in a journal is to have people _more_ able to read it, not less!!

It's simply not true that UKRI don't allow you to charge APCs to grants. I've costed it in to my current grant with no problems. They also provide funds to institutions to support open access publication, that academics without grant funding can access.

Generally people without funding support e.g. from 'developing countries' are able to publish for free via a fee waiver, as the article suggests. This new policy also means they're actually able to afford to read the research in the publication they're submitting to.

If you're arguing that the academic commercial publication model makes no sense and is in desperate need of wide-ranging reform, I agree with that. But I think this is a step in the right direction because at least it makes research accessible.

> The point of publishing something in a journal is to have people _more_ able to read it, not less!!

There won't be anything to read if most researchers are gatekept out of publishing in the first place.

> Generally people without funding support e.g. from 'developing countries' are able to publish for free via a fee waiver, as the article suggests.

Money issue is an issue in a lot of countries, not just developing ones. In France research budget are slimmer every year and it's not unusual for researchers to pay things like travel to conferences from their own pocket. Even when the institution is paying, it's often only refunding months after the fact, so researchers have to pay in advance and god forbid they ever lost a paper or else they won't see their money back.

And then there is the case I mentioned in other comments like myself who are out the academic system (or tries to enter it but have no support yet) but still having papers they want to publish. I don't want to shell out half or a full month of salary to publish a PDF that will be read by a dozen of person worldwide.

RAS used to have all articles available to everyone for free after 1 year (immediately if one wanted to pay for open access). I thought this was a reasonable compromise. The new policy will damage early career researchers and groups at less established institutions that will not be able to publish their own research. I have published a number of papers on MNRAS, but now I will move to other journals. In principle, I can charge the publication costs to my NSF grant, in practice that means I would not be able to send my students to conferences, because research support funding is very stretched (no more than few thousand dollars per year per student). This would damage their career prospects. Theory grants are already very small and adding several thousand dollars extra to the budget can make the difference between the grant being awarded or rejected (it should not be, but this is how it works). Moreover, even at R1 institutions, a lot of theory research is actually not funded by federal grants.

Journals were created to support the scientific community and provide a platform for scientists to discuss. Charging exorbitant publication fees damages the very mission of these journals.

* I absolutely agree that publicly funded research should not be behind paywalls, but right now with MNRAS it is not. Pretty much everyone puts paper on arxiv and people in the UK had to deposit papers into university repositories anyway where it is available for free. (This may not apply in all fields, but it is certainly true in astronomy)

* I have just applied for a UKRI grant this week and we are not allowed to put in page charges there full stop. (I am also lucky to be in Scotland where there is a special deal with MNRAS where we don't have to pay)

* I agree waivers are good, but there are plenty of people without external funding even in 'rich' countries like UK/USA etc. It's enough to see the success rates for grants to realise that many people don't have them.

> I have just applied for a UKRI grant this week and we are not allowed to put in page charges there full stop

I am highly and increasingly out of touch with how research funding is organised these days, but the MRC guidance about grants [1] says:

> Applicants should not include any costing for access publishing charges (APCs) or other types of publication in respect of peer reviewed research articles (including review articles not commissioned by publishers) and conference proceedings that acknowledge funding from the MRC.

> The charges for APCs and other publication charges for all research papers resulting from work funded by MRC (or one of the other research councils) are supported through block grants to UK HEIs, approved independent research organisations and research council institutes. A RO can then access these funds to pay for APCs for any article resulting from research council funding.

So no, you can't pay for publishing costs out of a grant, but you can pay for them out of funding the research councils have already given to your institution (and which they may have spent on property investments etc of course). is that not the case for you?

[1] https://www.ukri.org/councils/mrc/guidance-for-applicants/co...

While for other fields Gold Open Access may be a good thing, in astronomy it is worse than the status quo. Most papers were on arxiv, so people could read for free anyway. I've already seen comments saying we should switch to PASA which is has no page charges (unless you want to do the Gold Open Access thing) https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/publications-of-the-...

The right thing to do would be to switch to OJAp (see https://telescoper.wordpress.com/), and have the institution funds go to arxiv and such overlay journals.

That Publishing fee is nothing compared to the cost of the research itself. It's a rounding error and can be easily included in any research funding. Free Access is a clear Win. Any research that can not afford that Fee for a peer Review makes me doubt what other expenses have they eliminated during that research.

There was already free access, it's called arxiv. The value of MNRAS it was free to publish in, so no, not a win in any way.

Indeed. Astronomy has two major journals: The Astrophysical Journal and MNRAS. Up until now they complemented each other in their business model. MNRAS had no publication fees, but supported itself with a higher subscription cost. ApJ has publication fees and a lower subscription cost. Papers would require a subscription to read for a longer time on MNRAS than ApJ.

I always felt this system was nice because it allowed younger or independent researchers who perhaps didn't have grant money to publish in a top tier journal. But if one did have grant money one could afford to publish in ApJ and see the paper released earlier.

But it looks like this system is coming to an end.

> To be honest, the natural consequence of this will be that people will stop publishing in MNRAS.

Good. These "publishers" need to die out anyway. The only point of a journal is peer review and they don't pay peer reviewers anyway due to conflicts of interest. People should be able to simply set up a blog and start peer reviewing. No need for this old media whatsoever.