So the evidence to date does not confirm the hypothesis that the Gold Open Access publication model will advance science and be an unprecedented public good. Why not?

First, it may be that embracing a specific business model (in which the author or funder pays) and insisting that there be unrestricted reuse of published articles was not the best strategy for reaching the larger goal: giving access to research articles to as many people as possible in order to accelerate research and advance science. High subscription costs are a real problem that has developed over decades and that is linked to, among other things, the professionalization of science and science communication. Most professional societies have let publishing houses assume responsibility for the production of their journals, including many of the editorial processes, while the writing and peer-review processes have remained largely unchanged — usually provided by academics free of charge. It is understandable that academic institutions became frustrated when subscription fees climbed so high that they were unable to “buy back” journals they had helped to produce. But that problem was a matter of pricing, not a consequence of the subscription model itself.

It may also be that the open access movement underestimated the difficulty and costs involved in recreating a publishing landscape with the same variety and quality of journals, using a different business model. A model in which the author or funder pays for publication or simply deposits papers in a repository has served some sciences well. The best example is arXiv.org, established in 1991 with a focus on high-energy physics. It now covers many areas of mathematics, physics, computer science, and more and provides open access to 1.5 million papers.8 In other sciences — medicine, for example — there are some good reasons why journals should not be dependent on direct payment from authors and funders of research. These parties may have strong interests (financial or intellectual) in the publication of certain results, and the results may affect people’s health or health care. It is important that editorial processes and decisions are — and are perceived as — completely independent of the interests of authors and funders.

A subscription-based model may also be the only model that can finance highly selective journals with comprehensive editorial processes and quality control. Given that such journals pay editors and statisticians who objectively assess the importance of a research question and the veracity of researchers’ claims and employ essential production staff who ensure the accuracy, clarity, and accessibility of the information, author fees in such journals would be prohibitive for most researchers. The economics may change over time, of course, but that is the current reality.

Second, the Internet has developed in ways that very few people anticipated in 2001. At that time, only 10 years had passed since Tim Berners-Lee and Roger Cailliau submitted their (very modest) proposal to their superiors at CERN (the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) called “WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Protocol.”9 Since then, the Internet has indeed transformed our lives and the way we do many things, including science. But it has done so in ways we never imagined. Experiments with what would later be called social media and smartphones had just gotten started in 2001. Facebook was introduced in 2004, YouTube in 2005, Twitter in 2006, and the iPhone in 2007.

In 2001, we were optimistic and enthusiastic about the Internet and what it could do: information and communication could be free, and power decentralized. John Perry Barlow wrote his “Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” very late one night during the World Economic Forum in Davos in 1996.10 We had never heard of Internet trolls, fake news, fake science, fake journals, or fake peer review. And we couldn’t imagine a “dark web” where child pornography was distributed anonymously, where terrorist organizations such as ISIS could recruit new members, where identities and property could be hidden and stolen and could influence elections and threaten the concept of democracy.

Most of us still appreciate the openness and ease of communication provided by the Internet, but we now understand that freedom and openness don’t in any way guarantee quality or truthfulness. We realize that there is a vast amount of free content online — including scientific “information”; much of it is incorrect or misleading, and it is not self-correcting, as we might have hoped it would be. We recognize that the Internet needs some kind of governing structure, but experts in Europe, China, and the United States think quite differently about what good governance might look like.11 We like the free content available on YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, but we are happy to subscribe to Netflix, TV networks, and newspapers, too. Most of us are willing to pay for curated and enhanced content, while we also appreciate experimentation with new forms of information and communication. Now we know that there is no such thing as a free lunch, even on the Internet. Free-to-the-reader means that somebody somewhere is paying — usually to exert an influence on the content and its presentation.