Indonesia has shown that open access journals can develop on a large scale. DOAJ data shows a significant growth in the number of journals and the existence of many journals that do not use APC. This is an achievement that should be taken into account. However, this achievement should not be an excuse to avoid questions about the sustainability and fairness of its financing.
We need to stop using _open access_ terms as a stamp of success that does not need to be examined further. Journals that are open to readers should still be tested in terms of licensing, editorial quality, and sustainability. Journals that carry APCs should explain their costs and policies. Institutions that enjoy the academic reputation of scientific publications need to explain their contribution to the cost of knowledge infrastructure. Governments that want to increase research productivity need to consider how research results can be disseminated without creating disproportionate financial barriers.
If science is treated as a public interest, the financing of its openness should also be discussed as a shared responsibility. It is unfair if the entire burden is placed on editors who manage journals with limited resources. It is also unfair that authors have to face unaffordable costs just to make their research results openly readable.
This simalakama fruit will not be finished by asking journals to continue to make publications free, nor will it be by justifying any increase in APC in the name of sustainability. The solution is to build a system that divides costs transparently, provides financing options, maintains editorial quality, and protects researchers’ opportunities to contribute.
The final question is simple, but inconvenient: if Indonesia can build thousands of open-access journals, are we also willing to build a financing system that allows it to survive without sacrificing justice for writers?
Because scientific openness, which only guarantees that people can read, but does not give researchers a reasonable opportunity to publish, still leaves a fundamental problem. We can call it _open access_. However, before the problem is solved, we need to dare to ask whether the system is really open to all, or only open after someone finds out who is willing to pay.
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