Three days ago I blogged about Yale University dropping their Biomed Central (BMC) membership. Matthew Cockerill, the BMC publisher yesterday wrote a response. Briefly, he argues that the author-pays model is a viable business model for Open Access publishing and that the rising costs cited by Yale are simply a reflection of the increasing number of articles submitted to BMC.

This is an important discussion. I believe that the costs (especially work hours) associated with publishing an article can still be reduced by intelligent use of Web 2.0 technologies (see also my blog post on document formats). I also believe that the appropriate business model very much depends on the journal type.