[GOAL] OA Overview January 2017

"(1) The old librarians’ 'double-payment' argument against subscription publishing (the institution pays once to fund the research, then a second time to “buy back” the publication) is false (and silly, actually) in the letter (though on the right track in spirit). (2) No, the institution that pays for the research output is not paying a second time to buy it back. Institutional journal subscriptions are not for buying back their own research output. They already have their own research output. They are buying *in* the research output of *other* institutions, and of other countries, with their journal subscriptions. So no double-payment there, even if you reckon it at the funder- or the tax-payer-level instead of the level of the institution that pays for the subscription.

(3) The problem was never double-payment (for subscriptions): It was (a) (huge) overpayment for institutional access and (b) completely intolerable and counterproductive access-denial for researchers at institutions that couldn’t or wouldn’t pay for subscriptions to any given journal (and there are tens of thousands of research journals): The users that are the double losers there are (i) *all* researchers at *all* the institutions that produce *all* research output (who lose *all* those of their would-be users who are at non-subscribing institutions for any given journal) and (ii) *all* researchers at *all* the non-subscribing institutions for any given journal, who lose access to all non-subscribed research."

Article continues on to points 4 - 16.