Fee for publishing studies strangles Brazilian astronomy – 03/05/2023 – Sidereal Messenger

Last Wednesday (1st), the Royal Astronomical Society of the United Kingdom announced that, starting next year, all its scientific journals will be open access. Great news, right? Everyone will be able to read all articles in full, with no cost or subscription. Well, think again. For many Brazilian astronomers, it is almost a death sentence.

Understanding this requires understanding how an important (and increasingly anachronistic) part of the scientific establishment works: journals. The general idea for the last century has been that traditional peer-reviewed journals guarantee the quality of published work, giving research reliability. It is the prevailing paradigm, which could come in two modalities: either the person who pays the bill is the person who accesses the content, or the person who publishes it.

In recent decades, with the digital revolution (and the reduction of publication costs), the culture of “open access” has grown, which, when done right, promotes greater reach of published research without burdening the researcher. That’s not what the Royal Astronomical Society has done here, by simply shifting costs from one end to the other. Researchers who until December 31, 2023 can submit and publish their approved articles free of charge in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the main publication of the group, from the first day of 2024 will have to pay 2,310 pounds sterling (R$ 14.4 thousand reais) to see your work published.

“It’s catastrophic,” said Rubens Machado, an astronomer at the Federal Technical University of Paraná (UTFPR), on his Twitter account. “Most Brazilian astronomers don’t have the resources to pay these absurd fees. With the disappearance of MNRAS, it’s the end for us.”

Here we enter a new tortuous path to understand why this is “the end”. The CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), in its evaluation of researchers for granting grants, considers publications in high-impact journals, based on a particular ranking. For astronomy, the best positioned are Astronomy & Astrophysics, Astrophysical Journal, Astronomical Journal and MNRAS, “the last of the major journals in astronomy not to charge fees”, according to Machado. “For that reason, it was the only one we were still able to publish. Without it, we are essentially barred from publication.”

Some researchers, such as Helio Jaques Rocha-Pinto, from UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), suggest that the way forward could be to switch publications. “We must now honor the Open Journal of Astrophysics which is, in fact, free for authors and readers,” he wrote.

The problem: this one doesn’t even count points in the CNPq ranking. Posting there right now could be an act of self-sabotage.

The knot needs to be untied. National institutions, notably the CNPq, should begin to recognize journals such as the Open Journal of Astrophysics and/or pressure the Royal Astronomical Society to grant exemption (or reasonable prices) to Brazilian researchers, to keep that path also open to national research.

This column is published on Mondays in Folha Corrida.

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