Collaborative publishing: the difference between ‘gratis journals’ and ‘open access journals’

“An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds”. That is the beginning paragraph of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, known as the Budapest Declaration. Most likely, no one associated with science, research, or scientific knowledge would be against these statements; ‘public good’ or ‘for the sake of inquiry and knowledge’ are altruistic terms that fit perfectly with the research environment. Unfortunately, in some of the subsequent lines, a not-so-encouraging sentence appears: “While the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce”. This declaration gave birth to a new type of journal, the open access journals, with a business model based on the statement, “These new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses”.