This is good news. Academic publishers are parasites and anything that reduces their stranglehold on academic knowledge is good. That said, parasites are, if nothing else, resilient.
So, there's a few issues that I'm concerned about. First, it's not clear to me that university libraries will be able to drop their subscriptions to these journals based on this decision. The vast majority of research receives some federal funding, but there will still be some subset of articles that are funded through private research grants and will still sit behind a paywall. Journal subscriptions are a huge drag on library budgets, so freeing that money up would be immensely beneficial. Second, I can see the journals reacting to this by going full open access, but charging massive "fees" to publish. Right now Nature charges >$10k to publish open access, and I'd expect them to ratchet that up as it becomes their primary vector to siphon tax payer money into their own pockets. This seems to be the playbook based on the European "Plan S" push for open access.
This certainly would seem to be the next logical move for the prestige journals. However, in the long term I think this decision to provide open access to the research allows new journals to compete on a more even footing, especially with the emergence of publishing and peer review services like Scholastica. Over time, a thoughtfully curated journal with advantages in speed, cost, editorial focus, peer review process, etc. may be able to overcome the journals whose advantage lie primarily in prestige & gate-keeping.
Maybe I’m missing something, but if Nature charges that much to publish why does anyone publish in Nature? Why don’t academics just create their own ‘ethically priced’ journal? It’s my understanding that most of Nature’s labor is voluntary and unpaid anyway.
You can create your own ethically priced journal any day of the week, but if no one reads it, no one will publish to it. And if no one publishes to it, no one will read it. Offering cheap or free publishing doesn’t solve this chicken-and-egg problem, unfortunately. Quite the opposite; it signals that the researchers who publish there are only doing so because they can’t afford the publishing fees of larger journals, presumably because their research isn’t interesting or noteworthy enough to attract enough money to do so. Honestly, $10k is a drop in the bucket when grants are in the millions.
Grants are only in the millions in certain fields. But more than that, $10K per paper, budgeted for 2-3 papers a year in a 3-5 year grant across all the NIH grants, is a lot of taxpayer money that could be better spent funding students, postdocs, and researchers.
So, there's a few issues that I'm concerned about. First, it's not clear to me that university libraries will be able to drop their subscriptions to these journals based on this decision. The vast majority of research receives some federal funding, but there will still be some subset of articles that are funded through private research grants and will still sit behind a paywall. Journal subscriptions are a huge drag on library budgets, so freeing that money up would be immensely beneficial. Second, I can see the journals reacting to this by going full open access, but charging massive "fees" to publish. Right now Nature charges >$10k to publish open access, and I'd expect them to ratchet that up as it becomes their primary vector to siphon tax payer money into their own pockets. This seems to be the playbook based on the European "Plan S" push for open access.