[GOAL] Plan S: APC and service level

[Victor Venema]

Dear colleagues,

One of the discussions of Plan S is about its impact on researchers from 
less wealthy institutions. The article below is typical and I found the 
comment below insightful.

It made me wonder, would it be possible to link APCs to the service 
level? We could make a system where you can only ask for the maximum APC 
mentioned in plan S if you provide all services required by Plan S, 
while journals fulfilling less requirements would have a lower maximum APC.

Maybe an old idea/compromise, but I had not seen it anywhere yet.

With best regards,
Victor Venema
https://grassroots.is


https://theconversation.com/how-the-open-access-model-hurts-academics-in-poorer-countries-113856

>  Dominique Babini
> 
> Thank you for this very interesting reading and contribution to the conversation on the negative impact of APCs in developing regions.  You are so right.Why did APCs started?  We, in Latin America, worked the past 20 years to build successful non-commercial, non-APCs, academic-led, open access journals (only 5% of journals charge very low APCs) and now we are shocked to see that the basic question is not raised again and again: why should publicly-funded research outputs be a product in the market and not a commons/public good, and why open access should be a market and not a commons managed by the scholarly community?We are concerned with growth in the number of articles published with APCs, and because Plan S favors commercial APCs journals because they will comply with Plan S requirements which are not easy for developing regions quality OA journals to comply with.
https://theconversation.com/how-the-open-access-model-hurts-academics-in-poorer-countries-113856