@brembs It is increasingly more difficult for researchers to make ethical decisions when it comes to publishing. I also have some reservations about the pay to publish model in general, and even promotional discount offers from publishers such as MDPI, sometimes of 100%, but decisions are not always only yours to make. There are a lot of alternatives such as @PeerCommunityIn and I hope these scale up.

@brembs very nice personal and detailed account of how big read & publish deals by university consortiums are locking researchers into a system they do not want. A plea to take researchers who choose to publish preprints and articles in diamond no fee journals more serious.

@brembs
What I don't understand is: is the journal in question a hybrid journal or to an all-OA APC-based journal?
In the latter case: why are authors who don't want to support author-pays business models submitting their manuscript to an APC-based journal?
But in the former case: why is the institution (or the national deal) including hybrid journals in their transformative agreements?