Since 1986, subscription costs for academic journals have risen by 300% above inflation. In addition to exponentially increased research output over this period this has triggered what is known as “the serials crisis”; the inability of library budgets to keep pace with the prices set by publishers.
Simultaneously, it has been realised that putting research behind paywalls is both unjust (especially if the research was funded by the taxpayer) and also unhelpful; scholarly and scientific practices are not advanced by restricting access. This led to the rise of the open access movement. Open access is traditionally schematized into two routes: green and gold. The former means that access is made open through the author depositing a copy of their article in their institution’s repository. The second means that the journal itself is open and free to read.
Dear Dominik,
There is of course an another 'old model' (perhaps older than the one involving for-profit enterprises against which you protest): that of an academic institution or learned society running its own scholarly journal and publishing it wholly independently or with only marginal involvement of any for-profit enterprise.
Some of our best and most venerable journals belong to this category. To name but five, from five different countries:
Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute
Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient
Journal of the American Oriental Society
Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens
Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft
I personally prefer to support and publish in these kinds of journals, and have wondered why colleagues feel the need to create new journals if excellent old ones already exist, outside of the for-profit publishing framework.
Best wishes,
Arlo Griffiths