A new brawl brews in the Euro-blue between research communities and for-profit publishers

The Guild of European Research Intensive Universities warns pay to publish charges, “has severely worsened” the financial stability of the academic publishing system.

So much for the European Plan S, which requires publicly funded research to be OA – publishers have just changed who they charge and how much.

The Guild calls on EU members to work for, “article processing charges that are transparent and commensurate with the publication services, and that they support the development of alternative models that do not charge fees either to the authors or to the readers.”

Which looks like a call for a new publishing system, “how this support will be implemented concretely will nevertheless be key for the emergence of high-quality and financially sustainable alternatives able to compete with the present incumbent publishers and their dominant model.”

Until, or if there’s a new Euro model, ANZ universities can use the deals negotiated with publisher by the Council of Australian University Librarians that fund reading rights and production charges through journal subscriptions (umpteen CMM stories, and Expert Opinion, with CAUL’s Bob Gerrity,HERE).