Authors have the power, let them use it: rebuttal to David Shulenburger – madLibbing

"In July 2016, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published an article it requested from David Shulenburger, an economist and senior fellow at the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU).[1] In this article Dr. Shulenburger argues that flipping scholarly publishing of journal articles from a post-publication, subscription-based business model to a pre-publication, article-processing-charge model would make things worse: that is, lead to higher, not lower payments to publishers (and higher resulting profits for them).

Dr. Shulenberger recommends the right approach to the question — examining supply and demand conditions after a flip. However, he makes a fundamental error in his analysis, and as a result, reaches the wrong conclusion.  Following standard economic logic (as he recommends) leads to the opposite conclusion: a flip to an APC-based system would most likely lower the payments to publishers...."