Funding open access journal publishing: Article processing charges

Abstract

The widely accepted definition of open access (OA), as coined by scholar and advocate Peter Suber, is that it is scholarly literature that is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”1 To clarify, OA literature is free of charge to the reader, and there are two primary outlets that authors can use to deliver free literature to readers. Authors can reserve in their publication agreements the right to post their manuscripts in an OA repository (commonly referred to as “Green OA”) or they can publish their works in an OA journal (commonly referred to as “Gold OA.”) While the cost of the former method of access is free for authors, with the costs of maintaining the repositories absorbed by the host institutions by using existing technological infrastructure and staff, the latter method of delivering OA content still comes at a cost for the publishers. That cost, however, is often passed on to authors rather than the traditional method of recouping costs through paid subscriptions.