Open access journals have emerged as an option against the high costs of journal subscriptions. The purpose is to spread knowledge so everyone can read everything that is published. But what is best: having limited access to all that is published or having all access to limited publications?
The question is it is best to charge readers and limit their access to published studies or charge authors and limit the publication of the results?
But I have to agree that the publication fees can limit the publication of garbage, although many institutions pay the publication fees only to get one more publication, even that without any scientific merit...
I agree with Mark, what is behind green or golden access is the question of how we deal with quality issues. In my field (French literature studies), we tend to publish in journals charging readers, not scholars; when the opposite model applies (scholars paying for being published), it is (almost) always related to lower standards applied to the publication: no peer review process, or "complacency peer review". This does not means that when you pay you have the certitude of the quality... but it somehow limits the phenomenon.
The generalisation of the golden open access would probably alleviate many scruples in certain fields of knowledge and encourage rubish publishing: if the publishing house can invoke the "freedom of access", and knowing that its costs will be covered by the researcher, why bother filtering?! I know this is not the case in many other fields, but this is a possible effect which cannot be unacknowledged.
On the other hand, green access poses other questions. If it is an article having passed a serious screening, it is probably that a publishing house invested time and energy in that, which poses the question of its economic viability if nobody will buy the products. If the article is published without having passed a screening, this comes to count on the critical judgement of every reader, something that even Wikipedia ended by complement with a form of "authorised screening".
I am affraid that finally I complicate the discussion more than I answer the initial question...
The aim of the question is to generate more questions!
So, I will add one more question, thinking about what Ioana told. In peer review process of scientific research, all work is performed by "volunteers" (authorship and reviewing process). So, why to charge an author a U$1000.00 fees? In my opinion, it increases the barriers to publish (especially in poorer countries) and also increases the "desire" to accept a "not so good" paper just to reach the budget...
There is someone actually involved in this process that can provide us with "inside information"?
I believe the peer review process is still performed on a volunteer basis, but the editorial work involved in submitting, publishing, and archiving manuscripts still requires some administrative costs. It is these costs authors must incur when trying to publish in an open access journal. Regardless, I think a good way to alleviate the risk of open access journals simply profiting by accepting papers would be to charge for peer review rather than acceptance. This may dissuade some researchers from submitting their work, but it also may attract those with stronger papers.
In Brazil (and some other countries) we have an excellent experience from SCIELO (www.scielo.org) which is a group of journals that have no fees to publish or to read. This is the top of open access.
Regarding the editorial costs (and other cost like maintenance), I have two observations. First, journals can profit with advertising, like a lot of internet sites. Second, journals can obtain publication funds from official agencies. Could be the same money that those agencies pay now to have access or to get published. Although it seems the same, in this setting everybody have access to the publishing process and can read everything that have been published. And journals will not be tempted to accept a paper just to reach the monthly budget.
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