Birds Do It, Bees Do It

We are likely to see increased mergers and acquisitions activity in the publishing world this year, and scholarly publishing is not exempt from this. There are many reasons for this, including such fundamental factors as low interest rates, but one reason is the growth of open access mandates from funding agencies, which is disrupting the way many organizations do business.

Making a Case for Open Access

Some professional societies need to be persuaded that open access publishing may be in their interest. The best way to do this is to provide data on the publishing ecosystem, including such things as the number of articles of interest to a society that appear in other venues and the practical implications of not having an OA option for prospective authors.

Open Access and Professional Societies

Let’s imagine that open access publishing becomes the norm. What will the implications be? One implication is that it will likely create significant pressure on professional societies, which will seek new business arrangements to augment their income and keep their society together.