The majority of open access journals do not charge processing fees. Such journals operate on a variety of models and combinations of approaches. This blogpost looks at the simple membership-fee-subsidy model. For a very large society, a small subsidy from membership fees could create a very substantial pool of money for open access publishing. For example, if the world's largest scientific society, the American Chemical Society, were to set aside $10 from the fees of each of its 158,000 members, this would create an annual fund of $1.5 million to subsidize open access publishing. For an organization of this size, it is not out of the question to find such money by shifting internal priorities, without raising membership fees by so much as a penny.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/08/2006 04:53:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.