In search of a cause

There’s no shortage of publishers for open-access monographs. What’s missing is a bogeyman to drive authors into their arms, says John Whitfield.

Open-access publishing began as a cause among scientific leaders who thought it unacceptable that the public should pay twice—and, in the case of journal subscriptions, pay through the nose—to read taxpayer-funded research. This conviction ran ahead of economic considerations and, when the Public Library of Science, PLOS, was founded in 2000, it relied at first on grants from charitable foundations.

The organisation owes its current financial health to the invention of the online-only mega-journal PLOS One, which has shown that publishing funded by article processing charges can be financially self-sustaining. Scores of journal publishers have followed in its wake.