From: <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 10:16:18 +0100 The trouble with funders paying publishers directly is that (i) it plays into the hands of big publishing which has the bodies who can attend the innumerable meetings with the civil servants to sort out the deal (ii) its a step towards explicit state funded publishing, with all the gentle pressure that entails - try publishing the journal that gives a platform to those, say, sceptical of the claims about manmade global warming, or any other modish orthodoxy, under a state funding model, and see how far you get; (iii) it raises risk to unacceptable levels: what buiness can afford to lose overnight 10, 20, 30% of its funding, and survive; (iv) big, clever, well-resourced publishing will game the new funding system Ms Gardner envisages(just as they are gaming APCs), will run away with even more profits than they already do and in doing so will further squeeze diversity out of the market creating yet more of a quasi monopoly which they can better exploit. Having a few thousand customers around the world separately paying me for content strikes me, from publisher perspective, as a more secure and practical way forward than trying to deal separately with a few Ministries of Education or their sub-agencies. A better way forward would be for the Ministries to devolve more decision-making to the library and user level, along with the money, rather than putting it in the hands of 'funders' who are really pretty pointless middlemen (but quite expensive for the taxpayer). Bill Hughes Multi-Science Publishing