A few months ago when the 2012 Australian Research Council Discovery Project funding rules came out, I was excited to see them putting money into open access publication: But you always have to read the fine print. When preparing my grant application, I discovered that one is not allowed to include publication costs as an item in the budget.

Journal Fee Fast-track Service Journal of Internet Medical Research 450 USD “initial decision within 15 working days, publication within 1 month after acceptance” Journal of Digital Content Technology and its Applications (JDCTA), and associated journals* 2000 USD “to review and publish your paper within 6 ~ 8 weeks” Mathematical and Computational Forestry &

Dr. David York, editor of Obesity Reviews, responded promptly to my email of today, saying that prior to receiving our petition, the journal had already decided to discontinue the policy. This is fabulous news. There are several journals remaining that according to their website continue to fast-track for a fee. I’ll provide an updated table in my next post.

Several academic journals offer fast-tracking for a fee, and I’ve been complaining about it, mainly because it’s hard to see how this policy could be implemented without sometimes giving monied authors an advantage not only in time until publication, but also in likelihood of acceptance. Traditionally, acceptance into a journal was not affected by how much the authors pay, and many of us would like to see things stay that way.

One of the things I love about science is that money can’t buy you admission into a journal. You simply got to do respectable science, as judged by other scientists. Getting accepted by a journal isn’t like getting accepted into a country club or a business deal. Although every system has its biases and science is no exception, at least there’s no actual money being handed over to grease the wheels.

I’ve just sent the fast-track protest letter with our original list of 18 authors to the several journals that charge a fee to fast-track. I believe their policy imperils the fairness of the scientific publication system. I’m sure we’ll need more support to convince some of these journals to discontinue their unsavory policy, so please add your name to the signatories here I’ll soon be linking to the responses we receive from the journals.

Blind justice. A beautiful ideal! That the merits of a case are to be decided without regard to the identities of the parties involved or the size of their bank accounts. This is something science aspires to in evaluating manuscripts for publication.

At least seven academic journals now offer preferential treatment for a fee—see the table at bottom. The journals describe this as a “fast-track” service that simply speeds things up. Even if that were all it was, this is an unwelcome development, as it means scientists from poorer countries or with poor funding will fall further behind their rich counterparts, whose publications can now leapfrog over the others.

I recently learned that a journal called Obesity Reviews has a “Fast Track Facility”: This is a terrible development for academia. It creates a two-tier system, wherein scientists who are well-funded such as those from rich countries now have an unfair advantage over those who don’t. Science traditionally has been a partial refuge from the injustice of rich vs. poor.

Previously, the Australian Research Council (ARC) expressly forbade use of grant funds to pay publication charges. This prevented many of us from publishing in open-access journals, as they generally charge a fee. Fortunately, the newly-revised funding rules change that, and instead strongly encourage open access, via journals and via depositing one’s research in an institutional repository. Hooray!