Categorizing Open Access Business Models
Models for funding open access journal article publishing can be sorted into three categories, organized by who pays and what they pay for: transactional, collective action, and subvention.
Guest Post — What Does Commercial Adoption Mean for the Preprint Movement?
Today’s guest bloggers suggest that the involvement of commercial publishers is not unequivocally bad for preprints, and provide some optimism about open access as a whole.
Guest Post — From Parasitism to Symbiosis: Escaping Peer-Pressure and For-Profit Publishers Through Diamond Open Access
Two environmental researchers argue that open-access publishing has undergone major “environmental” shifts, triggering rapid and far-reaching evolutionary responses, not unlike natural ecocystems.
Slow Food, Slow Publishing: The Beauty of Not Being First
Robert Harington reflects on our addiction to speed and advocates for slow scholarly publishing and the inherent beauty of not always being first.
Ask the Chefs: How Are You Responding to the OMB Proposed Rule Changes for US Research Funding?
Today, we ask the Chefs how they (or their organizations) are responding to the proposed changes to how US federal research grant funds can be used.
Academic Freedom for the Win; Open Access Mandate in Germany Declared Unconstitutional
A German court ruled against a mandatory article deposit requirement under Germany’s “secondary publication right” (SPR). Whatever the intentions, SPR is mainly going to contribute to the degradation of the record of science.
Guest Post — The US Government’s New Guidance for Federal Grants and The Case for Scholarly Societies
Today’s guest post is an urgent call for the SSP community to push back on the US government (OMB), which is poised to overhaul the concept of federal research grants.
Building Scholar-Ready AI: A Conversation with Todd Toler
A conversation on AI retrieval, the provenance problem, and the shared infrastructure scholarly publishing needs.
The Rise of China’s Scholarly Publishing System Part 2: Navigating China’s Publishing Ambition — Strategic Options for International Publishers
China’s publishing ambitions create genuine competitive pressures, but they also open opportunities for collaboration and highlight challenges that neither side can address alone
The Rise of China’s Scholarly Publishing System Part 1: China’s Journal Ecosystem Is Accelerating
China is no longer simply a major contributor to global research output; it is increasingly becoming a key force shaping the future of scholarly publishing. Understanding what is actually happening, and why, is the necessary first step before considering how publishers should respond.
Beyond the Article, Beyond the APC: What We Learned from 18 Months of R&D
Today’s post shares the results of an initiative designed to answer the question: what would it actually take to build a publishing model fit for the research ecosystem we have now, rather than the one we inherited?
Seven Questions about CC Signals
With CC Signals, Creative Commons wants to help authors put rules on use of their licensed content for AI training. The problem is, one of the licenses already permits free and unlimited reuse of that content, for any and all purposes. And the licenses are irrevocable.
Why Every Publisher Needs a Library Relations Strategy
Publishers that lack a deliberate library relations strategy are making consequential decisions without important and useful community perspectives.
APC Caps and Bans — Why Funder Policies Aimed at Curbing the Publishing Industry Don’t Work
A new report suggests the NIH’s promised APC caps will reduce global OA spending. But so far, funder efforts to control publisher and author behavior have largely been ineffective. Here’s why.
The Journal Article Is Not the Job
There is more and more skepticism toward the role of publishers, a steady commoditization of publishing services, and growing fragmentation across the research ecosystem. If that is the case, the question is no longer what publishers do, but how that value is understood and extended.