Two things I’ve come across recently which I don’t think I’ve seen before:

“Each article published in ACS journals during 2014 will qualify the corresponding author for ACS Author Rewards article credit. Credits issued under this program, at a total value of $1,500 per publication, may be used to offset article publishing charges and any ACS open access publishing services of the author’s choosing, and will be redeemable over the next three years (2015-2017).”
—American Chemical Society extends new open access program designed to assist authors

“Under [IOP’s] new programme, referees will be offered a 10% credit towards the cost of publishing on a gold open access basis when they review an article.”
—Changing the way referees are rewarded

(I’m presuming, though it’s not explicit, that these credits are additive, so if you published 2 toll-access articles with ACS you’d get $3,000 credit, and if you refereed 10 IOP articles you’d get to publish 1 article on a gold open access basis for free.)

I find this fascinating. The obvious catch for scientists is the same as any loyalty card: in order to use it you’ve got to keep shopping at the same company. It’s great psychology, because humans are notoriously reluctant to ignore the opportunity for a discount, so:

• Someone who’s got credit owing will be less likely to publish in some other journal even if the final cost-to-author is equal and even if that other journal is a better fit for the particular article. (How much less likely I don’t know, but I do think it’d be a factor.)
• Someone who’s got credit owing for OA publication would probably be more likely to pay the extra to publish OA rather than to publish toll-access for free but not get to use that tempting credit. (This might at least have a small side-effect of getting more people experience with the benefits of publishing open access.)

Both of these are obviously what the companies in question are banking on. I’m a bit concerned about what this pressure to publish with the same old big companies will mean for science – partly about competition, as in the world of supermarkets, but also partly the journals where articles should be finding their best fit. (Perhaps the whole ‘impact factor’ issue has meant that no-one’s ever considered only subject scope in that regard, but this definitely adds another confounding factor.) But given the clear financial benefits to the companies, I expect to be seeing more scholarly publishing reward cards popping up in future.