The estimable Peter Potter of Virginia Tech was on our campus last week for an excellent talk and discussion on current issues in open access.  A few questions from the discussion might have wider interest and I'd be glad for comments.

1.  We are now regularly reminded of the size of the profit margins of major publishers.  There seems wide agreement that a margin over 30% is problematic.  What would be an acceptable profit margin for a publisher to sustain without remonstration?

2.  In the current negotiations, Plan S or otherwise, the current publishers look to maintain their role in the marketplace for information, while switching, flipping, or transforming their business models.  What if a major publisher with a high profit margin were to devise a model that provided full and immediate and S-compliant open access, but it emerged that their profit margin either stayed about the same or increased?  What should be the position of libraries and research institutions in that eventuality?

3.  If we imagine a successful transformation of a very high percentage of current journal publication to S-compliant open access, should we expect or hope that the quantity of articles published will increase, decrease, or stay about the same?  Would a decrease be acceptable?

Jim O'Donnell

ASU