I suspect it’s the “financial viability” of OpEx that others are interested in imitating, not the production quality. Having people submit documents in Word and just throwing them up on a website with minor editorial oversight isn’t even really production. Articles are often full of grammatical and spelling errors. In the current issue, I count at least three grammatical errors in the titles of the papers, alone. I will say, though, that the website is beautifully done, and well worth emulating.

Finally, I’m pleased to hear no author has been turned away, but it’s kind of pointless to have that policy if you don’t advertise it well. How many people just haven’t bothered to try?

As I said in my opening paragraph, I know Optics Express is extremely popular, and I guess you can’t argue with success. But I nonetheless lament the fact that our most popular journal produces articles of poor visual and editorial quality and puts the OSA in a position of inherent conflict of interest. Maybe the current editors have done a brilliant job of accepting only the highest quality papers, despite the conflict, but it’s best to not have such conflicts of interest to begin with.

And I’m saddened that the efforts of the wonderful editors and staff of journals like Optics Letters and JOSA B are not respected or appreciated enough that the OSA is happy to make Optics Express its flagship journal. The OSA is right to take advantage of modern abilities like online publishing with free access and multimedia. But it’s a real shame that while they adopted flashy new technology, they abandoned the old sober notions of editorial proofreading and professional typesetting. Yes, I know people love OpEx, but the OSA should be setting standards, not blowing with the wind.

I think you’re right. I looked into it, and the Journal of Machine Learning Research somehow pays for everything without any fees. The person who founded it is next door, maybe I’ll get up the nerve to ask her how she funds it. It seems like the ideal model for a journal.

As for OpEx being “somewhat lacking” compared to other OA journals: It’s interesting to contemplate that SPARC (the major librarian-based advocate for OA) recruited OpEx as one of its original “Leading Edge” OA journals. As one of the two oldest OA journals, in any field, in the world, nearly every other major publisher of an OA journal has at one time or another come to OpEx to ask for help in “approaching the quality, high production values, and financial viability of OpEx.” No other OA journal is ranked as highly in its field as OpEx.

To set the record straight about pay-or-publish. In over a decade, no worthy OpEx article has ever been refused because the author was unable to pay.
And there have been very many such articles. In fact, OpEx enjoys special funding from its parent organization to assist authors in developing nations.

Perhaps this is indeed field-specific; I did some digging at a couple of the preëminent journals in my field (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/ and http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/coli). One is OA with no apparent fees, the other is non-OA and also has no author fees that I know of.

Also, Word docs?? Do they want readers to spew throwup all over the page?

For that matter, maybe things are different for closed journals outside of physics. Do you know of any which charge mandatory fees for publication?

You are absolutely right about the production quality. I painted all OA journals with too broad a brush there. PLoS has beautifully typeset, professionally produced articles, for example. I have changed my article accordingly.

My main point, however, was about the integrity of the articles. Saying that “good management” will fix a conflict of interest is a weak argument. That’s like saying we shouldn’t have campaign finance reform, because good politicians will do the right thing. Better to make sure there is no conflict of interest than rely on outliers of human nature.

Do not, however, implicate that “standard” closed journals don’t charge the authors an arm and a leg. Page charges are levied by just about every closed journal I’ve come across, and are often comparable to those from even “premier” OA journals such as PLoS. OA journals often provide a means for application of fee waivers as well, if the cost is a true hardship.

While it sounds like the quality of the particular journal you’ve cited here may be somewhat lacking, it’s unfair to plaster this generalization across all OA journals. The production quality is a consequence of the journal management, not whether it is OA. Any journal should be concerned with peer review and quality production, as the loss of readership and submissions due to lax practices in these areas will cost far more than allowing a shoddy paper to be published.