Outwardly, the Open Access movement seems to be cohesive. However, not all Open Access advocates are in agreement with how to institute profound and long-lasting changes to the scholarly communications system. These disagreements can become quite heated; after all, resource spent on one approach is money, time, and energy not spent on other approaches. In addition, there are those for whom Open Access is not a priority at all. This section explains these disparate perspectives.
Works with “free availability on the public internet” are more likely to be read, and the outcome of this broader readership will result in increased citations and general recognition.
Similarly, as is the case for high-energyp article physics and arXiv, if a field demonstrates collective support for Open Access it develops a reputation for open, collaborative research and scholarship. This, in theory, leads to grants, media attention, and other benefits.
Another rationale for supporting Open Access is that at present, for-profit commercial publishers control the scholarly publishing system. In this system, faculty, graduate students, and others who stand to benefit from scholarship have no control over how research is disseminated and made available.
Tax paying dollars fund research at nearly all levels in one way or another. The tax-dolalrs at work rationale argues that since tax paying dollars are funding this research, tax payers should be allowed to access the research they subsidized whenever they please.
The final rationale posits that the current practice of pay-walling research disadvantages communities that do not have the means, but would stand to benefit, from accessing scholarship. This position argues in favour of making research available to all communities, irrespective of their geographic and socio-economic position.
As with any large movement, minority opinions exist. Several topics of contention include: the relationship between Green, Hybrid, and Gold Open Access; Open Access as a peripheral concept in mainstream of Scholarly Communications; continued skepticism of the efficacy of Open Access for researchers; and, Open Access mandates and academic freedom. Fortunately, current challenges now focus on how Open Access can be made to work in practice, having moved on from the discussion of whether it should happen at all.
Supply-side models are funded by producers, either through grants or personal monies (researchers), or by institutional proxies on their behalf (institutional APC funds).
A supply-side model that relies exclusively on subsidies risks undermining market-forces that could lower journal production costs. An adverse effect of this could see journals producing content that is out of line with reader demand (in terms of quantity and quality). Furthermore, this model sees institutions that produce more research (high tier institutions) shoulder more of the cost than institutions that produce less research (lower tier institutions).
Demand-side models are funded by the consumers (readers) or institutional proxies on their behalf (institutional libraries).
Demand-side open-access models put a burden institutions to make material available for combined readership that does not shoulder much of the cost. For those without institutional backing, i.e lay readers, demand-side models are largely prohibitive.
Pinfield, Stephen. (2015). Making Open Access Work: The “State-of-the-art” in Providing Open Access Scholarly Literature. Online Information Review, 39(5), 604-636.
Glushko, Bobby, Rex Shoyama. (2015). Unpacking open access: A theoretical framework for understanding open access initiatives. Feliciter, 1, 1-6.
Crow, Raym. (2009). INCOME MODELS FOR OPEN ACCESS: AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT PRACTICE. SPARC Consulting Group. Available here.