Mariëlle Prevoo, Ron Aardening, and Ingrid Wijk, [writing for the Scholarly Kitchen](https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/02/04/guest-post-a-plea-for-fairer-sharing-of-the-true-costs-of-publication/), on the idea to shift from APCs paid out for publication, to APCs fronted at the submission stage:
> A shift from publication-based charging to process-based charging may lead to better allocation of scholarly communication costs, lower charges per published article, and probably also a better consideration about the choice whether to publish and in which journal. The time seems ripe to introduce such a new APC model now that more and more journals are flipping to an OA model.
This is a terrible idea. It's doubling down on a [fundamentally unjust author-pays OA regime](https://items.ssrc.org/parameters/the-library-solution-how-academic-libraries-could-end-the-apc-scourge/), one that erects barriers to authorship in place of barriers to readers. Unless you're a grant-funded natural scientist, or employed in a rich institution or national system—which is to say, scholars from the Global South, and humanities and social science scholars everywhere—you will be effectively blocked from submitting.