Separating The Threads: What Is the Link Between Access and Profitability?

"Two recent newspaper editorials (by Monbiot and Guttenplan) made angry arguments against the “ruthless capitalists” behind scholarly publishing, charging that profit margins were far too high. Both articles suggested that open access (OA), particularly gold OA, was the solution to this problem. Do these arguments hold up when the majority of OA journals are owned by those same ruthless capitalists and when some OA journals are proving to be extremely profitable? ..."