Open access meets the not-so-open purse

"The lack of economic analyses of how various access options may affect publishers and consumers (for example, readers, libraries, and governments) impedes the development and implementation of public policy in this area. However, a recent report coming out of the United Kingdom will likely aid this process. The detailed analyses and recommendations in this report [RIN's Heading for the Open Road: Costs and Benefits of Transitions in Scholarly Communications] will be very important for publishers and policymakers. However, the AIP [American Institute of Physics] community should carefully consider the following caveats: The author-paid, open access model may be practical for well-funded fields such as physics, but it becomes problematic for fields where funding is less generous, such as mathematics and the social sciences. And given the huge diversity of the enterprise, the market should determine how much the author pays. Further, the report's conclusions underscore AIP's need to experiment with different access models — which we are pursuing with the new open access journal AIP Advances. APS's new open access journal, Physical Review X, will publish its first papers in the fall of this year. With creative ventures, persistent diligence, and constructive engagement we will find our way to a better system of disseminating knowledge while maintaining scholarship's integrity and value to the wider community...."