A Max Planck Digital Library Open Access Policy White Paper published this week makes a case for a large-scale transformation of the current corpus of scientific subscription journals to an open access business model. The PDF of the White Paper can be found here.

In their conclusions, the authors state: “The time is ripe for the global research community to accelerate the transition to open access. We have the crucial opportunity to transform the underlying business model of journal publishing while protecting the financial viability and core functionalities of the publishing system at large. Ultimately, all subscription spending must be stopped: this is the simple culmination of the incremental steps of the past decade. The significant savings can then be reinvested for the co-creation of a range of publishing services that will truly serve the scholarly endeavors of the 21st century.”.