Envisioning a Global, Open Publishing System without APCs: Report of an International Symposium | OAnarchy

Much thinking remains on how Open Access (OA) is best achieved in a globally coordinated and equitable manner. Will it be built on shared copies of some version of the work via an open repository (“green” OA) and/or on journals with contents that are entirely open (“gold” OA)? To what extent do these contrasting models complement each other (Guédon, 2017, p.8)? Other questions include how to fund such a system both globally and equitably, how to empower current and primary stakeholders in shaping an open future, how to transition from the currently dominant subscription model to a fully open model, and how roles of current stakeholders may change in the process. In this dynamic environment, article processing charges (APCs) have emerged as a significant source of funding for gold OA journals, to the extent that in 2015 Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL) proposed a model to flip the scholarly publishing system to OA entirely via APCs (Schimmer et. al., 2015). The MPDL proposal deeply influenced the 2015 Berlin 12 OA meeting and the subsequent launch of the OA2020 Roadmap Initiative. An APC-based “flip” was also explored and endorsed in the University of California Pay It Forward project (Smith, 2014). In principle, the authors of this blog believe that a large-scale flip to an OA publishing model is a positive step, increasing the proportion of articles accessible to the global community of scholars. However, APC models shift the problem from reader access to author access (Peterson, 2013) and take a kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to solving the challenge of developing a global and equitable OA publishing model. APC supporters have suggested that institutions and funding agencies, not the authors themselves, bear the burden of paying APCs. But two problems emerge with this solution.