Methods of Financing Gold Open Access Publishing
In scholarly publishing, there are many business models for OA journals. Some charge publication fees (paid by authors or by their funding agencies or employers). Some of the no-fee journals have institutional subsidies. For more detail, see open access journals.
Roughly half the Gold OA journals have author fees to cover the cost of publishing (e.g. PLoS fees vary from $1,350 to $2,900) instead of reader subscription fees. Advertising revenue and/or funding from foundations and institutions are also used to provide funding.
As long as subscription publication continues to prevail (as it still does for 90% of journals today, including virtually all the top journals), the institutional funds that could potentially pay Gold OA publication fees are still locked into subscriptions to the journals that their institutional users need to access. Cancelling them is not possible unless those user access needs can be fulfilled by some alternative means of access. Meanwhile, publication costs are being paid for in full by the institutional subscriptions. So the only thing lacking is access for those users whose institutions cannot afford subscriptions. What can provide both (1) access for all users lacking it and (2) an eventual alternative means of access even for users at subscribing institutions (allowing their institutions to cancel their subscriptions and free them to pay for Gold OA publication fees) is the global adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates by all institutions and funders.
Read more about this topic: Open Access Publishing
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