In recent years, most scholarly publishers have introduced flexibility in the options readers have to gain access to content. A wide variety of new economic models offer customers choices that suit diverse budgets and needs, and at the same time, ensure that the quality, integrity, and economic viability of peer-reviewed journals is sustained.

Such initiatives include pay-per-view individual article sales; author archiving, which allows authors to archive their final manuscripts to their institution's repository; article sponsorship, in which authors (or the institutions that funded their research) choose to pay a fee to sponsor the formal publication of their article once it has been accepted for publication, whereupon the article is made openly available to any interested reader. A number of scholarly publishers are offering this option for some or all of their journals. Article sponsorship works well for certain journals in certain disciplines, as long as the income is sufficient to reliably sustain a professional level of publication.

Government mandates that ignore the need for sufficient and sustainable financial support for peer-reviewed journals -- whether the source of support is from users, authors, or sponsors -- risk undermining the very fabric of the system of independent, formal peer-reviewed publication, a system that is of crucial importance for scholarly communication and the preservation of scientific knowledge.