Financing the alternative: The KU Leuven Fund for Fair Open Access

Abstract

Recent reflections on the push for Open Access (OA), sometimes driven by discussions about the implementation of Plan S, frequently point out negative financial implications. In spite of high hopes and expectations, it is argued that a switch to OA, when realized through working with the same publishing partners, e.g. by agreeing on offsetting deals (i.e. deals incorporating both the cost of reading and the cost of publishing), will not alleviate the cost of scholarly communication.1 OA as such is not more expensive than the traditional subscription model, but a commercial approach to OA will make matters worse instead of better.2 The cost of publishing in the OA model will be at least as big a problem as the cost of reading was in the traditional subscription model, and the oligopoly already held by commercial players in the field of scholarly publishing3 will strengthen even further and extend to other parts of the research cycle. For indeed, “if the market trend of the last years continue, in the next ten years, two or three commercial giants will exploit not only publications but the entire academic workflow, from research data management tools and services, tools to analyse research data (such as through text and data mining), and tools used in research evaluation, all the way to tools to disseminate results and engage society beyond the scientific world.”4 The conviction that we need an alternative for the commercial approach if we want an affordable and sustainable sch