"--Depending on how much APC funding eventually shifts from libraries to the federal government, will the price mechanism for APCs adjust to accommodate the readiness of grant funding agencies to bankroll APCs? If so, can we assume the government will have a more price-elastic posture than universities historically have had, given the latter's tenure and promotion demand-side incentives to publish in high tier journals regardless the cost? If federal agencies are not elastically responsive to prices (i.e., if they reward publication in high priced journals without regard to prices), don't we just perpetuate the high pricing that librarians have so long lamented, therefore shifting this malaise's remedy to the public's dime? Is this fair to the citizenry? How does this affect public funding for other federally funded initiatives?
--Concerns about "existential threats" now appears in discussions about scholarly publishing. Scholarly societies have them. Can societies be assured of stable revenue streams, erstwhile from library journal subscriptions, if some complex admixture of federal government grant funds and university funds fund APCs?
--There seems to be no discussion among librarians about an "existential threat" to their own profession. If funding of journals shifts from universities to federal funding agencies, doesn't this cut out librarian involvement in selecting and funding journals? Correlatively, wouldn't this reduce their budgets? Also, would this reduce their collection development role to APC bean-counting, much of which will become the purview of offices of research whose involvement will merely be one of marking APCs as a line item in grant funding disbursement accounting? Would this be a good or a bad thing?
--Where is discussion about the opportunity cost of diverting a portion of hard-to-get state-funded research dollars to funding APCs? What research, e.g. for renewal energy, or cancer or agricultural research for developing countries, now goes by the wayside?
--Will societies and university publishers just gradually assimilate the newly emerging APC regime for their economic survival in funding membership activities, without discussions about possible threats to financial stability or discussions about the larger philosophical premises of doing so?
--On the philosophical issues, shouldn't society publishers worry about governmental ideological manipulation of who within their memberships gets grant-funded APCs? Sure, one could make that argument about federal grant funding per se. But doesn't the latter arguably addresses an externality that (in an ideal world) concerns the common good, while APC funding is an externality that does *not* necessitate federal subsidizing--given that scholarly publishing mechanisms can and should be developed that don't require federal subsidy? These are points everyone should ask regardless of political affiliation.
--From what one speaker at Charleston said, the complexities of negotiating with publishers has a new overlay: tortuous internecine discussions among consortial members. If this is true of all consortia, one has the sense that consortial leaders now have to have to engage game theoretic scenarios not only with respect to publishers, but also their individual members. Just imagine how much more complicated all this will now become with the pressures on libraries to pay for APCs. Isn't it undesirable to introduce this added complexity, at least at this juncture? Why not just work on contracting the number of journals published, about which . . .
--I've been arguing for contracting the number of journals, a la something like Bradford's Law. A refinement on that: we need to distinguish two rationales for contracting the journal space. These are:
Rationale (1.) An argument on the principled basis that it is desirable to contract the number of journals, given that the ever-growing glut of journal articles undermines the common good of discoverability and assimilation of research findings.
Rationale (2.) An argument from economic reality: library budgets are relatively flat so we need to deconstruct Big Deals or even the number of subscribed journals regardless the journal sales model.
Shouldn't big consortia use their negotiating power to argue that the ever-rising prices of journals (not to mention pressures for APCs merely to replicate the price dynamics of toll-access publishing) necessitates contracting the number of journals? This point extends not just to toll-access publishing, but also gold ones? If so, pursuing rationale (1) for contracting the journal space aligns neatly with rationale (2) for doing so. I.e., rationale (2) becomes the vehicle for accomplishing rationale (1).
--I've also argued that consortia with journal negotiating power should educate their faculty about the need to contract the journal space. A refinement to that, too: the discussions should focus on rationale (1) above, rather than (2), which concer