About the session
9.00am, Wednesday 1st April 2015
Martin Paul Eve
University of Lincoln / Open Library of Humanities
While article processing charges (APCs) are emerging as a key way in which existing publishers can adapt to gold open access, this mode is problematic in many ways. Considering the existing subscription publication ecosystem as a risk/ cost-pooling mechanism leads to the conclusion that APCs are a concentration of risk that may come with damaging institutional consequences, particularly in the humanities disciplines. Consortial and co-operative modes of funding gold open access, however, do not come with these drawbacks but are susceptible to free riders. In this talk I will address the theoretical backdrop to these models and evaluate the range of current offerings. Noting that classical
economic incentives do not seem to operate in a world of
inter-library loans, I end with a description of the model that we are implementing for our Andrew W Mellon Foundation funded initiative, the Open Library of Humanities.
