Publication fees for OA articles in PLoS journals will be paid directly by the Max Planck Society (MPS). See: Max Planck Society covers publication fees for PLoS journals, Mark Patterson, PLoS Blog, August 21, 2008. Excerpt:
With the ever-expanding range of open access options available to authors, we encourage other research funders to set up funds to cover publication fees in open access journals or to include such expenses within their grants and research awards.
In a comment at: Max Planck Society to support publication charges for PLoS journals (in Coturnix’s Blog Around the Clock, on August 21), Stevan Harnad has posted “a critique of paying for Gold OA without first having mandated Green OA“. Excerpt:
At the very least, Closed Access deposit in EDOC can certainly be mandated for all MPS published research output as a purely administrative requirement, for internal record-keeping and performance-assessment. This is called the “Immediate Deposit, Optional Access” (IDOA) Mandate.
Comment: EDOC is the eDoc Server of the MPS. I agree that the IDOA strategy merits attention from the MPS, and from other funding agencies.
