Open-access is why you’re reading this. Because my long self-experimentation paper was in an open-access journal, many people could easily read it. I’m sure this is why I managed to get a contract to write The Shangri-La Diet.
The BMJ is experimenting with a way to support open access: Ask for publication fees from authors with grants that include the appropriate support.
We are introducing this policy as the next step in our efforts to ensure the sustainability of open access publication of research in the BMJ, and we are doing so in the spirit of experimentation. Many research funding organisations, sponsors, and universities now provide grants that cover journals’ fees for open access publication.
Wise. While I was writing The Shangri-La Diet, I visited Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard. I learned that it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, provided by foundations. As far as I could tell, the people in charge were doing nothing to reduce the subsidy required. Yet they wanted the idea to spread.