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> 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.

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.

* 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...