STM Association Response to the Max Planck Digital Library White Paper on the Open Access Transition | STM Publishing News

The STM association has read with interest the Max Planck DL (MPDL) paper on the transition to OA [MPDL_OA-Transition_White_Paper.pdf]. We welcome this contribution to the open access debate and share the belief that the most sustainable open access future is a Gold one. We also agree with MPDL that at the highest level there is sufficient funding to support both a consumer-led model and after 100% transition a producer-led model. However, the MPDL paper makes a number of assumptions which are not backed by the current data available and the experience of our members. We hope the following observations will lay the basis for collaboration with MDPL and other stakeholders to explore how a sustainable transition to a fully gold open access world might be made possible: • There is no consensus on adopting the Gold model. Presently the declared policies of many research institutions and countries support the author self-archiving repository-based route to open access, the so-called Green route, with over 400 mandates in place around the world to date. The Green route provides only access to a draft version of an article, after a period of delay, and is funded through the subscription business model. The Green route therefore relies on the continuation and existence of journal subscriptions. • Adoption of Gold OA models also varies significantly by discipline. Gold OA has been most enthusiastically adopted in the biomedical sciences where there is both widespread researcher support and an infrastructure of funders willing to support APCs. This is a good area on which to focus since this is a sizeable field of academic publishing. The picture is very different in other areas, especially those not commonly funded as generously as the sciences. For researchers without such resources to fall back on, the discretionary funds of their institution may be the only source. This has made the prospect of Gold open access more challenging for many researchers in social sciences, humanities and the arts.