High APCs Are a Feature, Not a Bug
14/12/2020
There has been some outrage at the announcement that
Nature is following through with their 2004 declaration of charging ~10k ($/€) in article processing charges (APCs). However, not only have these charges been 16 years in the making but the original declaration was made not on some obscure blog, but at a UK parliamentary inquiry. So nobody could rightfully claim that we couldn’t have seen this development coming from miles away.
In fact, already more than 10 years ago, such high APCs were very much welcomed, as people thought they could bring about change in scholarly publishing. Some examples, starting with Peter Suber in 2009: