Social Science Space

Shaun Khoo argues that whilst a shift to gold (pay to publish) open access would deliver wider access to research, the lack of price sensitivity amongst academics presents a risk that they will be locked into a new escalating pay to publish system that could potentially be more costly to researchers than the previous subscription model.

If higher fees result in fewer academics wanting to publish with a journal, then it seems likely when a journal introduces or increases its fees, it should see a reduction in the number of articles published. But researcher Shaun Khoo did not find any evidence that this was the case.