There is now significant and growing momentum behind open access publishing, both from within the academic community and also in the form of funder and governmental policy and mandates. While many open access journals do not raise Article Processing Charges (APCs), those operated by commercial publishers must do so in order to cover costs. The average APC currently charged by the established publishers is very high, and would result in significant additional costs to institutions and funders were the world to switch to open access over night. There is therefore a real need to find ways to publish at both large scale and lower cost, in order to make open access truly sustainable for the research community.

This paper details the design of a low cost publishing system with these concerns in mind, that is on the one hand affordable for the community with APCs significantly lower than average, yet is also profitable, sustainable and scalable for the publisher. A particular focus will be on integration of PKP software and a streamlined offshore production model.