Although I'm in favor of open access journals for a handful of reasons, I think there are a couple of things working against the idea:
First, handling fees. As someone starting out in the field, there are a great number of journals that advertise (read:spam), and have handling fees. It feels very much like a scam, or a system were "success" can be bought.
Second, as one commenter on the article suggests, with a handling fee, the publisher is incentivized to print more. (There's an undercurrent of complain in my field that there isn't enough quality publication space, so this is two-sided, but is the cost of more outlets a lowering in quality?) However, with a subscription model, the quality must remain high to keep subscribers. (One might also argue that "closed" publishers want to print as much as possible to give more authors' schools reason to subscribe, but I don't know the level of this effect.)
Third, on a more personal level, living as a doctoral student—more particularly, with the budget of a doctoral student—even nominal costs can seem overwhelming. I don't see my institution covering "handling fees" in the near future, particularly with the amount of cost-cutting going on. The fees are less onerous for faculty, but present a slightly higher barrier for student entrants.
"However, with a subscription model, the quality must remain high to keep subscribers."
This is not how the economics of academic journals currently work. It is very standard for large academic publisher to produce a large quantity of really poor journals. These journals are then bundled into packages with the bigger name one and academic libraries are essentially forced to purchase the package (because pricing for the quality titles along doesn't make sense).
I made a mistake in the original article when I chose the phrase "handling fee", which suggests that the journal charges just for evaluating your manucript. That's not how it works (in the great majority of cases anyway) -- you pay only if your paper is accepted and published. (So I should have called it a "publication fee".)
This is an important difference because it means you don't have a situation where someone submits a manuscript, pays the handling fee, and feels the journal owes them positive reviews and publication.
Many open-access journals provide waivers for authors without institutional funding. Typically, editorial staff and reviewers and not informed whether or not the author took a waiver, so that can't influence the accept/reject decision.
you're assuming, that open access journals need a handling fee
distribution costs are marginal, it is possible for an open access journal that wouldn't take handling fees. it could be a non-profit organisation, or it could have other monetisation methods.
Yes, I'm making that 'assumption' because the article says, "... open-access journals, such as PLoS ONE, which charge authors a handling fee to cover their operating costs ..."
EDIT: Link from comment above shows fees for the PLoS family of journals start at $1350 per article and go up rapidly from there.
I absolutely agree. The pay-for-publishing model is heavily disadvantaging towards smaller research institutions, independent researchers or young researchers.
As someone who doesn't work in academia but who's job is dependent on research, I'm curious, can't you build publication fees into your research costs? I could be way off here, but I assume that most research is grant funded or university funded, can't they just make publication fees rather than subscription fees part of their calculus?
First, handling fees. As someone starting out in the field, there are a great number of journals that advertise (read:spam), and have handling fees. It feels very much like a scam, or a system were "success" can be bought.
Second, as one commenter on the article suggests, with a handling fee, the publisher is incentivized to print more. (There's an undercurrent of complain in my field that there isn't enough quality publication space, so this is two-sided, but is the cost of more outlets a lowering in quality?) However, with a subscription model, the quality must remain high to keep subscribers. (One might also argue that "closed" publishers want to print as much as possible to give more authors' schools reason to subscribe, but I don't know the level of this effect.)
Third, on a more personal level, living as a doctoral student—more particularly, with the budget of a doctoral student—even nominal costs can seem overwhelming. I don't see my institution covering "handling fees" in the near future, particularly with the amount of cost-cutting going on. The fees are less onerous for faculty, but present a slightly higher barrier for student entrants.