ACS Sends Open Access Fee Invoice To Corresponding Author's Emergency Contact
WASHINGTON, D.C.—The American Chemical Society confirmed Tuesday that it has begun sending open access fee invoices to the emergency contacts of corresponding authors who have not responded to the initial invoice, the first follow-up invoice, the second follow-up invoice, or the email marked “URGENT: Payment Required Regarding Your Recent Publication In JACS.”
“We noticed that many corresponding authors were not opening our emails,” said an ACS spokesperson. “Some had marked them as spam. Others had set up filters that automatically routed our invoices to a folder labeled ‘Do Not.’ We felt it was appropriate to reach out through alternative channels.” The alternative channel is the emergency contact the author provided when they created their ACS ID in 2014, which in most cases is a parent, a spouse, or an ex-partner who does not know what an open access fee is and did not want to learn.
Dr. Kevin Park, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois whose mother received a $4,500 invoice for his recent publication in Organic Letters, said the call from his mother lasted approximately forty minutes. “She asked me if I was in debt. I said no. She asked why an organization was contacting her about money. I said it was an open access fee. She asked what that meant. I explained that I had written a paper, and that other scientists had reviewed it for free, and that an editor had handled it for free, and that I now owed $4,500 so that people could read it. There was a very long silence. She asked if this was a scam. I said it was not a scam. She said it sounded like a scam. I did not have a strong rebuttal.”
Park’s mother subsequently called the ACS to dispute the invoice. She was told the fee was standard. She asked who had performed the work described in the paper. She was told her son had. She asked who had reviewed the paper. She was told volunteers had. She asked what the $4,500 was for. She was told it covered “the cost of publication.” She asked what that meant. There was a pause. She was transferred to a different department which did not pick up.
At press time, Park’s mother had paid the invoice and told her son she was “very proud of him” but that he should “find a field where they don’t charge you to do your job.”