Dear Uzo and all,
Thank you for your thoughts on 'How you would design an OA system'.
You suggested a "global OA Fund: Supported by governments, philanthropic foundations, and international health organizations, covering APCs for researchers without institutional backing".
Would you like to say more how this would work?
My initial thinking on APCs is that research funders should take responsibility for APCs. The primary reason that some funders (notably the Gates Foundation) have decided to stop funding APCs seems to be that they are fed up with the rising costs of APCs which have clearly gone way beyond real costs among some of the top journals. So the key challenge is to make APCs reasonable and affordable. How? Funders could simply cap the APC budget line in funding proposals.
If funders agree to take responsibility, there would be no need to have a global OA fund and we could avoid what might become a cumbersome bureaucracy.
"Sliding-Scale APCs: Authors with institutional or private funding may contribute proportionally" I'm not sure what this means, but there is a challenge here about how to reduce the inequity of some researchers being unable to afford the APC. If a reasonable APC cost could be included in every research proposal budget, this should address this problem for most researchers.
"Institutional Memberships: Universities and organizations pay annual contributions that subsidize publications." I think you refer here to the arrangements whereby some academic institutions pay an annual amount to publishers. If funders routinely covereed reasonable APC costs, such arrangements should perhaps not be necessary?
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org