What kind of cost transparency can be realistically expected from publishers?
During the Panel discussion "Open Access monographs: Policy and practice: Moving towards Plan S and REF", Martin Eve @MartinPaulEve made the following comment (starting at 21:10s in the video): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFmoL-9fh3Y&t=1210s
The third I want to raise was around plan to assess conditions of transparency for publisher costs. I think this is really quite difficult and potentially illegal actually to demand from suppliers that they give their internal postings as a condition of the receipt of public money.
This leads to some questions:
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What levels of cost transparency can be realistically required from publishers as a condition of the receipt of public money?
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If the goal of asking for cost transparency is to reduce publishing prices, will publishers not decline to share that information voluntarily, precisely for the reasons it might put at risk their revenues as consequence of the reduced prices?