The Bizarro World of Journal Publishers

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As I was getting an article ready for final publication through the journal publisher website, I was given the option of offering the article as “Open Access”: I acknowledge that publishing my article with open access costs €2000 / US $3000 and that this choice is final and cannot be cancelled later. Whoa. First, any normal publishing industry pays the authors! Second, as the person who authored the work (and is giving it away for free) I am quite frankly appalled by the fact that I would be paying a large sum for free distribution. Sure, I have no beef with a for-profit firm providing a service for a fee, but the crazy price indicates that they are exploiting a monopoly that we have voluntarily given them. In a world with cheap self-publishing alternatives, this is not tolerable. Until we actively come up with an alternative, publishers will continue these extreme pricing practices.