(Please be aware, this article was posted on April 1st)

Open access publishing for 99¢?  A new Internet start-up hopes to cash in on the open access movement by offering a stripped-down publishing service for the iPhone.

OAapp (pronounced “oh-app”) is the first academic publishing application specifically built around smart phone technology.

The application, available from the iTunes store or directly from the company (http://oaapp.com), OAaap is the brainchild of Rich Hanley, CEO of OAsys, who was astonished at the article processing fees charged by leading Open Access publishers and thought he could do it cheaper.

Where some publishers are competing on quality, OAaap is focused on price, offering a no-frills publishing service that any scholar can afford.

OAaap offers little more than automated publishing.  Documents are uploaded to a public server in Bangalore, India along with Medline-compliant metadata supplied by the author.  OAapp accepts manuscripts prepared in standard MS Word, LaTeX, or texted directly into one’s phone.  The app allows cell phone pics to be inserted directly into the manuscript.

Removing expensive editorial oversight, peer-review, and copy editing were key to getting prices down to 99¢, according to Hanley.  Following pricing models like DeepDyve‘s, OAaap will offer $9.99 monthly subscriptions for unlimited manuscript publishing, which can be charged to a PayPal account or deducted directly from one’s institutional library OA fund.

OAaap removes lengthy publication delays and expensive article processing fees. This is a race to the bottom, and we want to be there first!

Rather than investing in editorial control, the company is betting on post-publication evaluation.  Using a 5-star evaluation model similar to PLoS, mobile readers can rate each article using their numerical keypad. Each month, authors receive an automated text message with performance statistics for their articles.  And if you want to increase your metrics, the company will be releasing a auto-downloading app for that too.