I just received an invite to submit articles to the Open Sports Medicine Journal.  The advantages of such journals are that anyone can access them on-line for free and, more importantly for me, that authors retain the copyright of their articles.  I've read the copyright info at the site, and it seems to be genuine.  A nice extra is that there is no charge for color in figures, unless you order reprints (does anyone any more?).  The downside is, of course, page charges.  Here is the relevant section from the author info page http://bentham.org/open/tosmj/MSandI.htm:

Letters: The publication fee for each published Letter article submitted is $600.

Research Articles: The publication fee for each published Research article is $800.

Mini-Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Mini-Review article is $600.

Review Articles: The publication fee for each published Review article is $900.

Submissions from the Editorial Board Members of the journal will receive a special discount of 50% on the total publication fee. Submissions by authors from developing countries will receive a discount of 30% on the total publication fee charge

These fees aren't too bad, but they still amount to about twice as much as the page charges that some journals levy.  Anyway, I consider it my duty to bring this journal to the attention of the list.  View it at http://bentham.org/open/tosmj/.  Please note that I am not on the editorial board, which includes no less than 83 names, few if any of whom are the usual suspects.  Note also that the journal has only one article in total for 2007 and so far one article for 2008.  It seems strange to me that the editorial board members have not submitted a suite of articles to get the journal going.  Maybe they did and their articles were all rejected by reviewers. :-)  Either way it doesn't look good.

I'll write an item for Sportscience on copyright and page charges for the other main journals in sports med and exercise science.  I'd be grateful if you folks could send me any info on page charges or lack thereof for articles you have submitted lately to our various journals, to save me looking it up.  Also, please let me know of any particularly draconian or liberal copyright clauses for our journals, preferably by sending me the form.  I will publish the precise wording, where relevant.

Will

Will G Hopkins, PhD FACSM
Institute of Sport and Recreation Research
AUT University
Private Bag 92006, Auckland 0627, New Zealand
Landline +64 9 921 9793
Fax +64 9 921 9960
Cell +64 27 427 2518
Skype WillTheKiwi
will@..., whopkins@...
Statistics http://newstats.org
Sportscience http://sportsci.org
--------------------------------
Be creative: break rules