There are a variety of reasons why an author may want to publish in an open access publication, including:
From opensource.com:
Open access has two different versions—gratis and libre:
From opensource.com:
There are distinctions regarding the venue in which open access works are published and archived—green and gold:
Article Processing Charges (APC) is one way in which journals cover the cost of publication of open access articles. An APC is a fee paid by the authors to the journal where they want to publish. The APC model is used by two types of journals
In a truly open access journal that uses APCs the author is required to pay the APC for publication. In a hybrid journal the author is not required to pay the APC for publication, but may choose to do so for a variety of reasons.
Paying an Article Processing Charge (APC) to make your article open access in a traditional subscription based journal may feel like the publisher is double dipping (the publisher gets revenue from subscribers and from subscribing libraries and charges an APC) and sometimes it is just that. But there may be reasons to pay the fee to make your article open access. These include:
Anticipating a significant readership beyond well resourced universities in North America, western Europe, Japan and Australasia perhaps in the non-academic reading public or in academic communities in the global south. Open access can provide affordable and convenient access for such reading audiences.
Anticipating significant media interest. Journalists can be put off by finding an article behind a paywall and reluctant to link to such articles.
‘Read and Publish’ or ‘Transformative’ agreements are included in some licenses that Williams Libraries signs with journal publishers. In these cases the payment the Libraries makes to the publisher not only allows members of the Williams community to read the content of the journals, but also covers the APCs should members of the Williams community choose to publish in those journals. If APCs are covered by such an agreement, the publisher should make this clear up acceptance of a manuscript. If you wish to check whether a specific journal is covered by such an agreement, contact your liaison librarian through Ask-a-Librarian.