Central Casting — The Funding Problems We’re Baking Into the Future of Scholarly Publishing | The Scholarly Kitchen

"In the midst of debates about the justice and propriety of reader-funded research publication (aka, the subscription model) versus author-funded research publication (aka, open access [OA]), we might have lost sight of a very important set of fundamental dynamics — namely, the affordability in each model for each participant in the resulting economy. Now, to address the first complaint some may find with the preceding paragraph, let me state that I believe that OA is a business model. Even Green OA is a business model, because, like it or not, 'free' is a price, just as zero is a number. In an economy, the price 'free' distorts markets just as much as, and perhaps more than, any other price. But Green OA can only exist as an exception price in an economy where the major production aspects are not free, which is why Gold OA has come on strong recently. Gold OA provides pricing that makes sense to pursue and compete over, and can support viable production systems and growth. The conversation has matured accordingly, with nearly everyone in the scholarly publishing world acknowledging that publishing costs money, no matter the form. Claims that some high percentage of OA publications (some say 70%) charge nothing falter under close examination, as you can see other business models — sponsorship, institutional subsidy, institutional subscription/membership, or nascent subscriptions — at work under the blanket of OA that’s been thrown over them. Even if you were to accept the premise, many of these entrants are too new to have demonstrated they are sustainable or poised to succeed. Besides, it’s actually good for OA to have a business model. It makes the main premise — that readers can have free access to scientific publications — much more likely to succeed. But there is a problem with the OA business model which needs some serious attention. As currently conceived, the payment system for Gold OA centralizes payments around far fewer sources than the subscription model. This leads to higher prices in fewer places, increases the risk to publishers as these payments consolidate, and puts more pressure on fewer points of failure. Last year, we saw two interesting results of this. First, at a publishing conference, a development officer with a large and previously OA-supportive philanthropy stated clearly that they no longer felt paying APCs was a good use of their funds ... Second, many prominent OA journals published fewer articles in 2014 than in 2013 ..."