Economic thoughts about “gold” open access – madLibbing

"There is increasing support in the scholarly communications community for “flipping” the standard journal publishing model from subscription-based to “gold” open access, which is to say a system supported by pre-publication fees (article processing charges or APCs), rather than post-publication fees (subscriptions), and in which there is free (unpaid) access to the published articles.[1]

The increasing support is especially strong in Europe, as illustrated by the recent signing of the “Expression of Interest in the Large-scale Implementation of Open Access to Scholarly Journals” which came out of the Berlin 12 Open Access Conference, sponsored by the Max Planck Society. As of this writing, 44 institutions have signed on to the EoI.

A number of my colleagues in US academic research libraries have expressed skepticism or downright opposition. And recently the Advocacy and Policy Committee of the Association of Research Libraries has circulated a one-sided briefing paper in advance of a discussion during the spring ARL business meeting on 27 January. (I say “one-sided” because support of gold OA was presented, tepidly, in just nine words — “the overall aim of this initiative is highly laudable” — followed by nearly a page of single spaced “concerns and criticisms”.)

I think critics of the Expression of Interest are jumping to unfounded and incorrect conclusions, and that organizing opposition to the EoI may greatly hinder a very promising effort to radically transform the scholarly publishing ecosystem much sooner and more effectively than other efforts (notably the “green” OA movement). I’ll offer a few observations here, written from my perspective as an economist. (See Caveat below.[2]) For this article I’m going to assume that open access is a good thing overall...."