Following on from Richard Poynder’s editorial on sustainability of open access (OA) publishing in August, ecancermedicalscience has now published an editorial by David Solomon which focuses on funding models in OA.

The editorial, The impact of digital dissemination for research and scholarship, looks beyond the standard article processing charges (APCs), well known to most OA authors, and highlights alternative funding models currently in use by OA journals. For instance, many are supported by a partner University or founding charity and are able to avoid APCs altogether.

ecancermedicalscience operates a ‘pay what you can afford’ model where only authors with access to funds specifically set aside for open access publishing are asked to pay for publication.

As OA becomes the primary means of publishing research, the sustainability of OA journals will become increasingly important. David Solomon’s editorial illustrates some of the possible solutions to this problem.