The most exciting aspect of MIT Press's Direct to Open OA book initiative is that library-participant fees are set, in part, according to ability to pay:
To determine fees that allow the offer to reach the revenue target, the Press:
- Assessed the total universe of academic institutions—by type, size, and region—that could participate in a collective open offer;
- Estimated (based on past demand) the percentage of institutions in each segment expected to commit to one or both subject collections;
- Estimated the relative value of each collection based on number of titles;
- Indexed the fee tiers based on the median acquisitions budget for each tier; and
- Set provisional fee levels sufficient to achieve the revenue target.
The MIT model was designed in collaboration with Raym Crow—arguably the leading figure in the non-APC OA funding world, going back to a classic 2006 paper on publishing cooperatives. He helped Annual Reviews with its subscribe-to-open model, and, since then, has been working with MIT Press on this Arcadia-funded project.
The best feature of the MIT model is its reliance on ability-to-pay (as proxied by acquisition budget) in setting membership fees. Not institution size, not authorship counts, nor other wealth-agnostic factors.