• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: change in business m

    From Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jun 16 10:34:23 2020
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has charged authors
    nothing; costs are covered (and more, as the commercial publisher makes
    a profit and also other RAS activities are subsidized) by subscriptions.

    There is a rumour that this will change soon. Has anyone here heard
    anything similar? If so, is there some sort of source one can check
    with, as opposed to just another rumour report?

    [[Mod. note -- A related note -- MNRAS has also discontinued their print edition -- they now publish only an online edition. But their subscription prices for libraries remain very high (> US$10K/year). See
    https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/monthly-notices-goes-online-only/ -- jt]]

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  • From Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)@21:1/5 to helbig@asclothestro.multivax.de on Wed Jun 17 06:29:12 2020
    In article <rc8hcv$1m2v$1@gioia.aioe.org>, "Phillip Helbig (undress to
    reply)" <helbig@asclothestro.multivax.de> writes:

    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society has charged authors nothing; costs are covered (and more, as the commercial publisher makes
    a profit and also other RAS activities are subsidized) by subscriptions.

    There is a rumour that this will change soon. Has anyone here heard
    anything similar? If so, is there some sort of source one can check
    with, as opposed to just another rumour report?

    [[Mod. note -- A related note -- MNRAS has also discontinued their print edition

    That makes the rumour---if true---to start charging authors even more
    bizarre, since presumably going online-only is to cut costs.

    -- they now publish only an online edition.

    I think that there are still a few more paper issues to come, but the
    writing is on the wall (or, now that physical libraries are being decommissioned, floating around on the internet).

    But their subscription
    prices for libraries remain very high (> US$10K/year).

    True, but one needs to compare them with other subscription-only
    journals (of similar quality and overall size, of course) and not those
    with lower subscription prices but which levy page charges as well (and
    many have for a long time, even before the concept of open access or
    even online journals existed, the latter tending to use the term "article-processing fee", but I see no substantial difference from page charges).

    See
    https://telescoper.wordpress.com/2020/06/14/monthly-notices-goes-online=
    -only/
    -- jt]]

    Yes, that is the source of the rumour. :-|

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