What If Academic and Scholarly Publishers Paid Research Authors?

Authors of scholarly papers often have little problem with piracy of their material if said piracy might increase the number of people reading their work. As a matter of fact, publishers assume financial risk for scholarly and academic authors. This article from Scholarly Kitchen asks therefore the question: «What if publishers paid research authors to publish, on a widespread basis, and in amounts that would be meaningful?» Positive and negative aspects of such an idea are explored at length.