Who Pays for Open Access?

" ... Like a politician’s promise, however, the benefits of OA have to be paid for—typically through an Article Processing Charge (APC) charged to the author or, more commonly, the author’s employer. These can average between $2,000 and $3,000 per article, according to Anneliese Taylor, Assistant Director, Scholarly Communications and Collections, at the University of California, San Francisco Library. “These are increasingly a line item in research grant funding proposals,” she said, pointing out that funding entities are themselves often proponents of Open Access. It should be noted that in a recent Library Journal interview Peter Suber, Director of Harvard’s Open Access Project, estimated that only about 50% of all open access articles are fee-based, so the APC model is by no means universal. Taylor noted that funding levels for Open Access are gradually increasing, although many journals are adopting a hybrid approach. This makes some content available only to paid subscribers and other content open, using the Gold model: distributing through an OA publisher or aggregator. The alternative Green OA model—self-archiving the author’s final accepted manuscript on a personal website, institutional repository, or other subject-based OA repository—does not require payment of an APC. Taylor noted that journals using the hybrid approach are trending towards increased OA content. Journals do not typically disclose their publishing cost structure, although some supplement APC revenue with traditional alternatives, including association membership fees and paid advertising. Taylor pointed out that some of the newer OA platforms are offering generally lower APCs to journals ... Payment of APCs comes from a variety of sources. According to the Publishers Communication Group’s September 2014 Open Access Library Survey, the authors themselves provide the highest percentage of funding, although a significant portion was covered by outside funding ... "