The ERC and Plan S: an open letter | by George Walkden | Jul, 2020 | Medium

"I was dismayed to read your press release of 20th July announcing that you are withdrawing your support from cOAlition S and Plan S. I was even more dismayed to see that you rationalized this based on the needs of “young researchers who represent the future of European science and innovation”, arguing that the unavailability of APC funding for hybrid journals under Plan S is detrimental to early career researchers. As a young researcher and ERC Starting Grant awardee myself, I would like to take this opportunity to state categorically that I do not recognize this argument as valid.

The harm that hybrid journals cause to the ecosystem of scholarly publishing is well known. In particular, through “double dipping” — charging subscription fees at the same time as full APCs for Open Access articles — publishers of such journals are able to appropriate a far greater quantity of public funds than would otherwise be possible. Pinfield et al. (2015) demonstrate empirically, in a UK context, that double dipping is not merely a theoretical issue, but a genuine problem; they also show that hybrid journals charge on average vastly higher APCs than fully Gold Open Access journals, strongly suggesting that funding Open Access publication in hybrid journals represents bad value for money...."