First, a very brief history of scholarly publishing, starting in 1665[1] when scientific journals started to be published by learned societies. This model continued until the 1950s, when commercial publishers such as Pergamon Press started with their USP (unique selling point) of rapid time to publication of ~3 months,[2] compared to typical times for many learned society publishers of 2 years or longer. Fast forward another 50 years or so, and the commercial publishers were now dominating the scene, but the business model was still based on institutional subscriptions, whereby the institution rather than authors paid the costs of publication. As the number of journals expanded, even well-off institutions had to make difficult decisions on which subscriptions to keep and which to cancel. By the late 1990s the delivery model was changing from print to online, but the overall issue was that many scientists around the world no longer had access to many journals.
References
- "Epistle dedicatory", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 1, 1665. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1665.0001
- D. Ginsburg, and W.J. Rosenfelder, "Alicyclic studies—X", Tetrahedron, vol. 1, pp. 3-8, 1957. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0040-4020(57)85003-0