Ashwin wrote (slightly edited):

You mention on your blog that

“Also, there are already signs, both from university administrations and from research councils, that paying for authors to publish gives them the power to influence what research we do and where we publish it. It is very important that this be resisted, as it will surely drive our research towards mediocrity.”

I wonder what you meant by this – I would appreciate if you could please elaborate (to me, or on the blog) on what you meant by “paying for authors to publish” and how that drives research towards mediocrity. Do you mean that having funds for specific areas means we don’t pursue our own topics? Or that if there is an incentive for authors (such as monetary incentives, promotions, etc) if they publish in particular journals (such as in scopus listed journals), then that would not be good for research?

My reply:

“Paying for authors to publish” refers to the “gold open access” scheme which is being pushed by many people here (the government, the Royal Society, etc.) That is, there would be page charges for publishing, but once published the article would be free to everyone – no subscription charge. The plan that they are trying to introduce here is that the money that universities save on library costs (for journal subscriptions) would be used instead for the page charges for their staff.

The problem is that the page charges are rather high (they are talking of 1500 pounds per article on average), and the money earmarked for this is not enough for the current rate of publication of British academics. So there will be some selectivity. Universities may restrict the researchers who get the money, or the journals for which they are prepared to pay, or even the subject matter.

On the last point, research assessment here is becoming more formulaic; it will not happen in the current assessment, but it seems very likely that next time bibliometric data will be used in the assessment. This means that there will be pressure to get papers into journals with high impact factors. Already some of my colleagues have been told by the head of department, “The top journals don’t publish in your area; you should change your research to something which they do publish”. When we are dependent on the university to pay page charges, they will have an extra lever to apply this pressure.

As to mediocrity, there are many factors pushing us this way, most notably that the bodies awarding research grants are becoming more conservative and less adventurous in the research they support, with the excuse that they are spending public money and want a guaranteed return. So researchers who go for safe topics are more likely to get grants. The University administrators who authorise payment of page charges know even less about specific research topics than the funding bodies, and are likely to react in a similar way.

I have no evidence that this is actually happening, but it seems not too improbable that it will.

“Persuade university administrators that running diamond journals is an important part of an academic’s job.”

As to David’s comment, yes, if we all went to the diamond model immediately then there would be casualties. But that is not going to happen. As John said in his original post, it is much more likely that diamond will struggle to survive; I think it is something we need to have, and we should try to help it survive.

However the rational way to go (in long term) would be for university budgets, free from onerous library subscriptions, to spend a fraction of the savings on funding diamond journals published by learned societies, with some agreed modest percentage over costs to support the learned society.

Of course, the devil is in the detail as everyone would need to move pretty much simultaneously. Perhaps some of the many university groupings could start up some some of the journals … “The Russell Group Journal of Pure Maths”, etc.

I certainly agree with you that £500/article does not sound very cheap, especially if I were an amateur (in the true sense, of not being paid to do this).

Gowers’ new journal is trying to be a kind of halfway house, charging 500 pounds per article (though it will be free for the first few years). He thinks this is very cheap; I am not so sure.