Unfortunately, lots of 'predatory publishers' (those that publish whatever they get as long as the authors pay without checking that the quality of such papers is acceptable) have ruined the reputation of the OA model. Of course, some OA journals are good, too, but not everybody knows that.
I guess governments and universities must play a more active role. With a stronger movement that says public institutions like universities or libraries should not be burdened with journal fees after the public has already supported the research itself, it would be easier to change. At the moment it is a hen-and-egg problem: since there are no reputable OA journals there is no incentive to submit your work there, in turn keeping the reputation low. And if most papers are still at expensive publishers, universities must pay for open access publishing if is it used without saving money because all the fees are still needed.
If there is a clear consensus to support OA it could become mandatory to grant free access to publicly financed work, and then OA will become more common. I remember that papers written by employees for the US government cannot/don't have to transfer their copyrights, its just a matter of regulations.
Well, open access - this might take a while as now universities are urging the academics to publish in high impact journals - so, if these open access journals have high impact they will have papers going their way... but, these are expensive - and you have to pay for your work to be published - and there is nothing in the research encouragement model by the universities that would deal with this matter... it might take some years still... and those editors of open access journals might need to look at sponsors from industry or other government department, and reduce the cost for the academic to publish!
I think that regarding any faculty member on a tenure track initiative, where they will publish is very important. I know that several years ago many faculty would not dream of publishing in an 'open access journal, print or electronic; I think that way of thinking is changing for many departments across many campuses today because many more 'open access' journals are appearing that have received positive responses; they are open and the reviewing process is transparent. So it begs the question about what subject and department within the academic community you are talking about; are open access journals that will publish my work be deemed lesser in light of saying being published in an Oxford University Press journal which has a more rigorous peer review system?
Open access does suffer from fake journals and uncritical publishing, true enough. But recently the reputation of OA journals has become much more individualised. This is not least reflected in the widely varying fees demanded by the different journals form the prospective authors as well as very reputable [non-OA] journals offering OA for individual articles and the increasing number of OA journals with steadily growing IFs. Give it another couple of years and I think this development will progress much further and OA publishing will be on equal terms with the rest.
To me, the readers' payments may be acceptable but it goes without saying that the writer's payments , even the little ones, are completely unacceptable. The latter situation is a major obstacle for publication in OA journals, apart from others.
I totally agree - the writers' should be compensated for their writing - but with the pressure to publish - some of the authors are really publishing for those open sources - paying for this publication and not being compensated for them... Especially, as some of those open sources are not of high standard - and the universities are now asking for publications either in A or ASTAR journals!
I am not sure what the solution might be other than the greed reduction- which might be a virtue that those publishers might be seeking!
Comparing the three major publication models of today it's obvious, where the greed really occurs.
(1) Free OA publications, and around 60% of OA journals are completely free of fees (check it out at DOAJ.ORG). It's fair to say, that there's no greed.
(2) Fee-based OA journals get a revenue from authors, once. The fees are from quite low to quite high, with a tendency of being low (from my observation). Setting up an online journal, which OA publishers need, is not without cost (editorial board, journal backup, maintaining the whole process from CFP to publication). For me it's fair that those OA publishers demand some money for their services. The authors, who by the way are paid by the public, should get funding of course, so the fee should not be an obstacle for getting published.
(3) Closed journals, where authors (again, paid by the public) publish for free, but all institutions have to pay fees to get access to the authors' work. Here the public pays twice, namely the authors and their results. The amount of money made by this business model is far higher than that made by model (2).
Given that model (3) has developed during the last 15+ decades, OA publication is in its infancy. Use common sense: Beware of the predators (check out Beall's List 2013), delete emails with CFP from anonymous editors, and use some money of your funding to get published OA and disburden the work of your library.