For the questions raised by Ben, here are my some of my thoughts. 

(a)     how this change may affect authors who would be likely to submit to the journal 

I hope that the design researchers will continue to submit their excellent works to IJDesign, and also think with us to figure out a way to financially support the post-acceptance editorial works, so that IJDesign can continue to provide the high-quality, open access service to design academia.

(b)     what pressure this may place on the journal to maintain quality, e.g. reduce output if/when submission numbers diminish (or whether submission numbers have even declined) 

On the average, IJDesign publishes about 30 articles per year. In 2016, we received more than 200 submissions. I think that the number of submissions has been impacted somewhat since we included the post-acceptance publication fee statement. But, we still have many high-quality papers. Currently, we have 38 articles in the review queue after initial reviews and rounds of peer review.

I want to add that without the post-acceptance editorial works, the quality of the published articles will be impacted too.

(c)     what considerations go into a change of this kind, and what alternatives might be considered 

This very long response attempt to answer why we decided to make this change. I would very much like to learn suggestions by the design researchers about alternatives. 

Currently, more and more institutions, foundations, and government agencies have begun to provide financial support for authors to publish their works in open-accessed journals, such as IJDesign. I would like to encourage design researchers to also explore these financial supports. For example, a list of such funds is given here (https://www.plos.org/open-access-funds). With sufficient funding from these venues, it might be possible to make sure that IJDesign has a sustainable business model. 
 
(d)     what the prospects are for open access journals in our field if one such as IJD has felt the need to pass costs onto the authors, since doing research is already expensive 

I do agree that doing research is already expensive. However, IJDesign is not trying to pass the costs onto the authors. Rather, IJDesign has been carrying all these costs while giving a complete free ride to the authors, which include free submission, free post-acceptance editorial work, free publication, copyright to the authors, open access to the readers. If the existence of a high-quality, open access journal like IJDesign is beneficial to our field, then I hope that we can think together to develop a financially feasible way to support its continuous operation.
 
(e)     perhaps most crucially, what effect this may have for representative inclusion of the many institutions and research groups, independent researchers, and others in design who may not be able to rely on institutional budgets or funding grants to cover publication costs such as these, given design research is perhaps not high among many national research funding priorities (certainly in Australia at least)

As stated before, we have not yet charged any author a publication fee and hope to be able to continue to waive the publication fee, as long as we still have funding support from Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology. In the longer term, I am not sure whether it is possible to create a collective fund by donations or by departmental/institutional membership fees to cover publication costs for authors who do have genuine needs.    


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