How a few giants limit science in journals

The scientific establishment, the majority who control what information people will get, especially journals, has a market share that is now held by just a few companies. Elsevier has a large market share of scientific journals, they own 294 journals that begin with "A" alone! These journals are often too costly for the average person to buy, and even for some professionals to buy. Journals can be $100-1200 per year EACH. Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry is $384usd per year. Papers that want to be published are vetted by only a few people, around 3-7 professionals. An important step in science is for the PUBLIC to review the actual articles themselves, and there currently are few options for that.

But it's changing. No wonder open access journals are becoming more popular. If more of the public professionals actually point out problems in a study, the scientists that did the study can actually learn from that. Learning as a community? What a concept!

1. Here's a site where 3-7 peer reviewers review an article before being published.  The processing fee just to have someone look at your article is $100-200usd, add another $100 for each additional author. They charge processing fees because they do not charge readers fees. It appears they support the Open Access movement.
2. Another example: The cheaper digital rate for American Association for the Advancement of Science is $125 per year. This includes 51 issues.
3. JAMA is $125 per year for non-medical professionals, online only, and one of the less expensive journals.
4. A single article from Elsevier is $42usd.

Here is a page which has a list of sites for free and open studies, where you have access to more than just the summary.

If you want open access journals, the above link will help a lot, and you can do a search for "free journals", or get more specific with the topic of our choice, like "free journals algae". Support Open Access science. When information is shared, not cornered by greed, it helps more people. It's time everyone started acting like a larger community instead of a collection of independent companies.