Open access publications are funded in various ways. Although OA takes advantage of digital technology for free dissemination, publication still carries many costs. Sometimes, publishers charge a fee to authors or their institutions to offset these costs (in addition to typesetting and production, salaries for editors and other staff form the bulk of costs associated with publishing). These are known as “article (or book) processing charges” (APCs or BPCs). These can be quite high in some cases. Not all OA publishers charge such fees.
Similarly, not all open access publications are run the same way. Many for-profit publishers have developed OA content, recouping costs through APC or BPCs and collecting data from readers and users which they may monetize. Increasingly, advocates of OA are emphasizing governance--who is in charge of open access publications, and to whose benefit--to encourage more nuanced conversations about openness. Scholar-led OA publications and organizations have been at the forefront of these conversations.
The OAPEN OA Toolkit explains some of the differences between OA and non-OA publishing.
Here are some resources that explore the politics and practices of open access publishing in greater depth:
Jisc Intro to OA:
https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/an-introduction-to-open-access
Martin Paul Eve & Jonathan Gray: Reassembling Scholarly Communications: Histories, Infrastructures, and Global Politics of Open Access
OAPEN OA Toolkit:
https://oabooks-toolkit.org/
On Commoning:
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-08-05/the-frontier-beyond-open-access-publishing-commoning/
