Open Access 2020: Navigating the icy waters of Plan S

In the early 2000s, the Internet disrupted several major industries, including music, travel, retail, and publishing. Scholarly publishing was no exception, so society and commercial publishers began the work of converting print subscriptions to digital archives. While they were immersed in the logistics of digitizing content, the question of access became a hot topic: if the Internet was free and open, and scholarly articles could be accessed on the Internet, why shouldn't that research be free and open to read as well?

Many journal publishers, including SPIE, adopted a "hybrid" model: authors could, as usual, publish in a subscription journal for free or they could pay for open-access publication, making the article available online for anyone to read. For most journals, the open-access fee-or article processing charge (APC)-covered the expense of paper submission, peer review, and publication. Many researchers and funders imagined this hybrid model as a transitional stage toward the inevitable dissolution of the traditional subscription model.

Read the full article in SPIE Professional Magazine.