This is a solution that publishers are pushing forward. Plan S is an example of such plan. Obviously they are not doing this out of the goodness of their heart - the idea is that the person who publishes (the researcher) pays a large publishing fee to cover the costs of publishing and the markup. Several grants in Europe now require researchers to publish open source. This solution does mean that part taxpayer’s money that was previously allocated to research is now transferred to the publishers. This model can work as long as the publishers are not looking to make unfair profits.

This solution also enables a mechanism that allows publishers to leech off research grants. My e-mail inbox is full of “predatory open source journals”, which will easily accept your paper as long as you pay the open source fee. If the money is made at the moment of publishing, and not really dependent on the distribution of the work, then the publishers are motivated to publish as many articles as possible without being too concerned about whether the final product will be of high quality. There is a good possibility that as journals move to this model, high impact journals will also be more willing to lower their reviewing standards if this means collecting more publishing fees.