PeerJ introduces radical new business model for OA
Yesterday saw fascinating news of a new open access journal that may shake up a business model or two. The scientific journal PeerJ has revealed its pricing plans that are based on author membership rather than a per-article fee.
The ‘headline’ publishing cost for PeerJ is ‘$99 for life’, though in actual fact every author on a paper (up to 12) would need to have paid the $99 and the cost is more if you want to submit more than one paper a year. Details of ‘author plans‘ are provided on the website. Lifetime membership also hinges on contributing at least one review per year.
PeerJ will open for submissions soon, and publish its first articles around Dec 2012. It has respected founders and is stirring up a lot of interest. The platform will also provide a preprint server and both are initially targeting biological and medical sciences.
See below for blogs and news stories. With PeerJ’s co-founders coming from PLoS ONE and Mendeley, comments suggest this model is credible and the journal likely to succeed:
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/new-open-access-journal-aims-to-disrupt-scholarly-publishing/