Unlocking Secrets: What Open Science Pioneers Wish They Knew Before Today’s Reality Hit
One obvious possible answer was “the researcher.” This led quickly to the development of the article processing charge (APC), which is of course just another version of toll access, one that takes the toll gate from its old position between the content and the reader and plunks it down in a new position: between the researcher and the publishing service. More perniciously, the APC creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the publisher: the publisher’s interest in rejecting bad scholarship comes into conflict with its interest in preserving a revenue stream. Unfortunately, the APC is also the most obviously scalable and sustainable mechanism for directing cost away from readers, so the model took hold quickly and was enthusiastically adopted by publishers both commercial and nonprofit, some of whom were soon making more money than ever even as they were able to say (truthfully): “Look, we’re advancing open access!” This inevitably gave rise to the megajournal — and, worse, to the new phenomenon of predatory publishing, an enterprise that is basically a diploma mill for articles whereby unvetted, unreviewed content is presented to the world as peer-reviewed scholarship while the “publishers” who purvey it rake in the APC revenues. More than 20,000 of these journals are currently operating, pumping hundreds of thousands of unvetted articles (fraudulently presented as peer-reviewed research) into the scholarly ecosystem every year.
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