How Learned Societies Could Flip to Open Access, With No Author-Facing Charges, Using a Consortial Model | Martin Paul Eve | Professor of Literature, Technology and Publishing

"Under these circumstances, there is a way that such a society could flip to a gold open-access model using a consortial model (and no author-facing charges) similar to the one that we operate at the Open Library of Humanities. It requires some work, but there is a logic.

The road to implementation is as follows:

1. The society presents an offer to subscribers (most likely academic libraries): the society will go gold OA and will give subscribers a 3% discount if they continue to pay the subscription anyway.
2. The offer is only valid if 90% of subscribers agree in advance to this.
3. The offer is for a three-year period. After this period, the society will revert to a subscription model unless the library/subscriber base agrees to continue the OA offer.
4. If 90% subscribers do not agree to the OA rate, the alternative is a 3% price increase and a continuation of the subscription model...."