Yup, there are lots of startups and new players trying to change the way publishing works. I think the focus on tools is misplaced (and is often the tack that s

Yup, there are lots of startups and new players trying to change the way publishing works. I think the focus on tools is misplaced (and is often the tack that startups try to take) because it discounts the cultural factors at play in the industry. I'm incredibly interested to see if the Open Library of Humanities can really take off, because essentially that's the same subscription model, but flipped a bit (universities join as members). Anyway, I love that there are all these moves in the industry, but what I was saying before is just that nothing yet has shown that it can be successful (the only real change that I'd argue has proven success is OA publishing via author fees). To your point about OA just shifting the costs from subscription to publication costs, that's entirely true. But that feels like a more honest business model to me. You provide a service, someone finds value in that service and pays you for it. The pricing is transparent (as opposed to the current bundle pricing that's different from institution to institution). It just feels cleaner. But yes, it still costs money. And that's where I'm arguing that that's because it's a service that people value that costs money to operate. In my view moving to APCs instead of subscriptions better aligns everyone's incentives. The author is the customer (although even now in an APC world the author doesn't really pay, it's the funding agency).