So while still a financial barrier to authors, APCs up to 1k (well below 2/3k USD averages) can be justified as a publishing model to sustain journal production costs. The most equitable model would be diamond OA w/ non-profit publisher, where costs are paid by a third party (funder, society) (5/5)

including conferences, student scholarships and awards. This also applies to many society journals published by for-profit publishers (eg JASIST w/ Wiley). That’s why it’s so hard for them to leave these publishing models (4/n)

IMHO fees of $2k and above are unreasonable, fees of $5k and above are almost certainly prestige markups and what sustain profit rates. There are non-profit publishers that behave like the big commercial publishers (eg, ACS) because their publishing branch sustains the entire society (3/n)

At our society journal QSS w/ MIT Press we are transparent about pricing and charge $750 ($1200) for (non)members. As you see in the breakdown, production, submission and hosting =75%=$ 562.50 direct.mit.edu/journals/pag... (2/n)

APCs can be justified as a model when they cover production costs. Those can vary depending on rejection rate (since only accepted papers pay) and services offered, see: f1000research.com/articles/10-20 (1/n)

That is amazing, thank you so much! We also got really good feedback today when we shared it at a panel at the Royal Society of Canada annual meeting.

f1000research.com/articles/10-20

You might be interested in our preprint: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820

I don’t think that’s true, these publishers have HUGE overheads that pay processes that have nothing to do with journal production. And even the production cost could be reduced. Eg, if you don’t sell subscriptions or APCs, you don’t need sales dept!
Must read: f1000research.com/articles/10-20

Yes agreed, things are starting to move, and gaining momentum on some fronts. Personally I had been pushing my own institution towards OS for years and now @uottawa.ca has a Roadmap which we’re implementing via an Action Committee - w/ support from Assoc. VP Research ruor.uottawa.ca/server/api/c...

Thanks so much! Yes, the risk is certainly that we’re just preaching to the choir.. which is why I hope resources like that make juts slightly bigger rounds than to the usual suspects.

Collective action helps, even if individual contributions are small. For OA week I made this checklist which I’ll also promote at the Royal Society Canada tomorrow: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

Thanks for sharing Jeroen, it looks like an amazingly thorough and helpful document. I’ll share this with the @uottawa.ca Open Science Action Committee after giving it a more careful read. I completely agree that researchers can and should do a lot more. (1/2)