Open Access does not remove the market power of academic publishers

Research used to be open access. To read a learned paper, you went to a university library. Academics had privileged access because that library was near their offices. Papers have now moved online, often behind a paywall. Search has much improved and faculty (or their research assistants) no longer have to walk to the library. Others are not so lucky. This is wrong in principle, but the proposed solution, Plan S (Coalition 2018, Measey 2018, Thornton 2018, Rabesandratana 2019), is wrongheaded.

Plan S, supported by research agencies across Europe, demands that all research funded by public grants should be published in open access journals. Anyone should be able to read any paper.

The vast majority of people outside academia never read a scientific journal. They can be given free access to, say, six papers per publisher per year. Few would take this offer, but the political demand is satisfied: Taxpayers can read the research they paid for. Newspapers and magazines have successfully implemented this freemium model (Kumar 2014).

The costs of publication need to be covered somehow. Open access therefore means that subscription fees are replaced by submission or publication fees. Submission fees are more lucrative for publishers as most academics overestimate their chances of getting accepted. Publication fees incentivize editors to accept subpar work.

A shift from payment-for-reading to payment-for-publishing is fine in principle although many universities will struggle with shifting budget from the library to the departments. Poor universities now have limited access to research, but in the future may have to ration publications. Emeriti have library privileges (at zero incremental cost) but universities may be less keen to pay their publication fees.

Even if all new research is open access, universities will need to pay subscription fees for older journal volumes. Subscription fees are typically paid for collections rather than individual journals. Publishers may extend those contracts to include block waivers for publication fees. If so, Plan S would not change much. Universities will continue to hand over large sums of money to publishers. The general public will still not read my latest paper.

Plan S does not address the key issue. Publishers have a monopoly on titles. Professors must read their journals to keep up to date and have no choice but to pay the asking price. Academic publishers make excessive profits, employ excessive numbers of people, and pay excessive wages. Innovation is slow. In short, publishers behave like textbook monopolists (Mankiw 2014).

Open access does not solve this. Researchers must publish in the best journals for promotion, grants, and prizes. Plan S replaces the monopoly of subscription fees by a monopsony of publication or submission fees. The best journals can and will charge excessive fees.

Monopolies and monopsonies are best controlled by new entrants, but it takes so long to build the reputation of a journal that this is not a realistic option. The next-best alternative is regulation. Road, rail, power grid, and water treatment are all natural monopolies. When in private ownership, regulation is and should be tight (Mankiw 2014). Academic publishers are like utilities. They provide an essential service and face no competition. Publishers should therefore be treated like utilities.

Utilities are regulated differently in different countries. The simplest solution is price regulation (Laffont and Tirole 1994): free access for the first six papers, and a flat, low fee for the rest. Aggressive price regulation may bankrupt publishers. Regulators may therefore instead put a cap on the return on capital, and perhaps regulate costs as well, so that prices are lowered rather than white elephants build (Liston 1993).

The details of regulating a monopoly need careful study. But we first need to recognize the reality. Privately owned companies are sponging vast amounts of money from the largely public higher education sector. Plan S takes a principled stand on a minor problem but ignores a bigger one.



Coalition, S. 2018. Plan S: Making full and immediate Open Access a reality. Science Europe.

Kumar, V. 2014. Making 'freemium' work. Harvard Business Review (May 2014).

Laffont, J. J., and J. Tirole. 1994. Access pricing and competition. European Economic Review 38 (9):1673-1710.

Liston, C. 1993. Price-cap versus rate-of-return regulation. Journal of Regulatory Economics 5 (1):25-48.

Mankiw, N. G. 2014. Principles of Microeconomics. Nashville: Southwestern College Publishing.

Measey, J. 2018. Europe's plan S could raise everyone else's publication paywall. Nature 562 (7728):494.

Rabesandratana, T. 2019. The world debates open-access mandates. Science 363 (6422):11-121.

Thornton, J. 2018. Transition to immediate open access publishing under Plan S will be smooth, promise backers. British Medical Journal 363:k5019.