Open Access publishers charge author fees in order to make their work freely available to the public. While I think most of these author fees are much too high given the low cost of publishing online, Sciyo appears to go even further and distribute royalties for article downloads to authors. The economic motivation seems to be a bit odd at first glance: why pay authors who generate higher bandwidth costs? I think the true motivation is to attract better papers that will generate more downloads and thus a better reputation for the involved journals. Also remarkable: this publisher already has among the lowest author fees in the industry (well, except for those who do not have author fees).

HT: Open Access News

Assuming Sciyo adjusts their pricing so as to remain profitable and a going concern, then this is half contest platform, half advertizing platform.

On the contest side, only the best authors are likely to beat the averages and end up ahead over time in the money department (it's a less than zero sum game for authors unless something like advertisement or donations subsidize Sciyo).

On the advertizing platform side, every author can be a winner if it enables the author to improve his/her exposure and s/he finds the price for that gain to be acceptable. [Eg, if the author has alternative ways of profiting from exposure and if the author thinks Sciyo can provide that exposure, then the s/he might consider the fees to be more than worth it, even if no dime is ever made from royalties.]

I would like to see companies aim this model at high caliber music writers, singers, animators, etc. If they stand out, they get tremendous exposure for gigs of all sorts and make decent money in royalties. Meanwhile, the world gets great music, film, etc, under great licensing terms.

I would like to see music, videos, etc, available not just as a finished product but in source code form where the various components come raw with build instructions.

The Uruguayan producer/writer/etc and his(?) crew http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?perm=593056000000002086 could have benefited from such a business arrangement (before the Cartel got to him). Yes, he is going to make a lot of money in this case, but did he sell his soul (control, freedom, artistic expression, etc, from now to eternity)?