NIH Head — Publishing Is Free!

This following video interview with Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the NIH, is astounding. It elaborates on the recent announcement of a plan to throttle top OA journal fees and continues to foreshadow more sinister plans.

Bhattacharya asserts that publishing something online costs publishers nothing, that Springer Nature is a “particular bad actor” in the OA space, that scientific journals are charging “twice” when they charge APCs — get your head around that one, because until an APC is charged, they haven’t even charged once — and that charging authors is a “predatory practice.” (It’s unsavory and conflicted, but “predatory publishers” are something else entirely, Mr. Tourist.)

• Bhattacharya helped to co-found one of the first “gaslight journals,” which is funded by RealClear Politics — for him, that’s no problemo, I suppose.

The expense of publishing selective journals is in the fixed costs and the costs of rejection. Technology costs money. Editors cost money. Systems cost money. Rejecting 70-95% of papers costs a lot of money. The few papers that pass muster have to carry the financial load.

Bhattacharya asserts that “exorbitant publication fees don’t do any good for anybody.” But it’s the OA advocates arguing that taxpayers required access to the reports of studies they funded that created those “exorbitant publication fees” because when an OA publisher charges an APC, they are not charging “twice” — their organizations are independent and their fees are rational, even if you might not like them.

Springer Nature — a [dramatic pause] “foreign company,” according to interviewer Charlie Kirk — is singled out, and the term “double dipping” is misapplied, as well. The entire thing could be written off, but there is a scheme being hatched here. The jingoism has a purpose. More on that in a moment.