 Why is academic work considered low-hanging fruit?
If there are complexities, they lie in the transition from where we are now to a world in which OA is the default for new research. Second, scholarly journals generally don’t pay authors for their research articles, which frees this special tribe of authors to consent to OA without losing revenue. The academic custom to write research articles for impact rather than money may be a lucky accident that could have been otherwise. This peculiar custom does more than insulate cutting-edge research from the market and free scholars to consent to OA without losing revenue. It frees researchers to challenge conventional wisdom and defend unpopular ideas, which are essential to academic freedom. Second, academics have salaries from universities, freeing them to dive deeply into their research topics and publish specialized articles without market appeal.
 There are no royalties to worry about
 It is easy to convince academics to do things for free  There are fewer potential revenue loss issues because authors still get money for open access work  There are no royalties to worry about  It is a general expectation that academics make their work freely available anyway