Thread by @mbeisen

I want to add one more thing here. @BrunaLab is right in the narrow sense that APCs are problematic, but they are not the problem. The problem is publisher greed, and fecklessness from scientific leaders and senior scientists who are complicit in a deeply broken system.

https://twitter.com/BrunaLab/status/1494448296915574785

It is important to remember that APCs arose in response to one of the most fundamental inequalities in science - the erection by greedy journal publishers of paywalls that limit access to the scientific literature to people at wealthy academic institutions in wealthy countries.

In the early days of the #openaccess movement, we tried to convince @NIH and other funders to directly subsidize publishing, pointing out that they were already funding publishing, they were just doing it in an inefficient way that wasn't good for science.

And @NIHDirector at the time Harold Varmus agreed, proposing a system he called eBioMed that would have created a publishing system that was free to read and publish. Sadly, this was killed by publishers (primarily scientific societies) lobbying Congress.

We started @PLOS as a response to existing publishers' united defense of paywalls, and, with publishers also using their influence to block efforts to fund alternatives, we resorted to APCs to cover our costs and allow us to make paper freely available to all.

We did this in part because there were already existing mechanisms to make such payments. People forget this, but back in the day many journals, in addition to charging for access, also charged authors "page charges" that were often many thousands of dollars.

Because publishers were already raking in large amounts of cash this way, we hypothesized that they wouldn't block APCs as a way to support open access publishing. And we were right. This was critical for the success of the early #openaccess movement.

When we launched our first journal, we appealed to funders to think of this new model as a way that THEy and not authors would fund publishing journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…. And we continued to press them to cover these costs directly so that there were no transaction costs involved.

We also realized from the start that an APC based system would create barriers to access to authors who didn't have robust research funding. And thus at its launch @PLOS has a no questions asked waiver policy completely decoupled from editorial assessments.

One of the worst decisions in @PLOS's history was abandoning this no questions asked waiver policy - it was driven entirely by finances and done over my at Pat's objections (there's a history to write another day about the PLOS Board losing site of its missions).

We had always imagined the APCs were a transitional step on the path from subscriptions to direct subsidies, the logic of which seemed and still seems unassailable to us. But, unfortunately in a way, @PLOS built a successful business on APCs before funders saw the light.

As a result, other publishers, especially the big commercial ones, began to see them not strictly as a threat to profits but as another way to make profits.

And, as a result, the long-term cozy relationship between funders and journals that was built on subscriptions is now being reformed around APCs.

But despite now being able to see end of paywalls, we cannot claim victory if we allow in the new system we have replaced barriers to reading with barriers to publishing - as @BrunaLab demonstrates we are.

The frustrating thing is that we were - and maybe still are - so close to getting it right. It is a huge step forward that funders across the world are finally acknowledging that they have a responsibility to shape how science is communicated - and the power to do so.

But they are still largely unwilling to do what is really necessary - to demand of publishers that, in exchange for the billions of dollars they funnel their way every year - that they actually act in the best interests of science.

And thus it should be an irreducible principle of all agreements between funders and publishers that NOBODY ANYWHERE SHOULD EVER HAVE TO PAY TO READ THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE OR TO CONTRIBUTE THEIR WORK TO IT. This is the only #TrueOpenAccess.

So, while acknowledging the problems with APCs, let's not lose sight of the real enemy: the unwillingness of the people with money and influence in global science to use their power to create a system of science communication that truly serves us all.