Well-intended government policy in an Eastern European nation is having unexpected results on school publishing, some of which are the precise opposite of what policymakers had hoped for. The problem is that those who draft policy have little imagination about how new programs will be taken up–and altered–in the marketplace.
There’s no denying the growth and increased acceptance of the concepts of open access in scholarly publishing. But the repercussions of the business models and methodologies chosen for OA are just beginning to be recognized.
A key element of open access is the notion that circulating information is de facto a positive good. Audiences benefit from access, and scholars benefit from exposure. But for the latter, at least, there is a case to be made for a […]
Alison Muddit interviews Goeffrey Crossick about his report on the future of open access monographs.
Open access publishing has gone through a number of stages. Though different people will classify these stages in diverse ways, one way to view this is to say that since the initial period of advocacy for open access, commercial interests have entered this market and are now prepared to augment their positions by leveraging their elite brands, using them, as it were, to draw manuscripts for a family of cascading products.
We spend much time these days wondering when the academic journal as we know it will cease to exist. Robert Harington discusses the role of the journal in light of a fascinating new venture in the field of mathematics – the overlay journal Discrete Analysis.
Professional societies are facing growing resistance to place their publications in libraries. This results in these societies seeking arrangements with the largest commercial publishers, whose sway with libraries and especially library consortia is significant. Libraries have demonstrated a clear preference to work with the larger publishers over the smaller ones. This leads to increasing concentration and market power in the academic publishing industry.
Why did such a small price increase arouse such a big reaction from open access advocates?
Is a flip to a Gold OA world as easy as a recent paper suggests?
New scholarly-communication initiatives have to do more than just demonstrate proof of concept: they have to demonstrate ongoing sustainability (what we might call “proof of program”) and the ability to create desirable products in the amounts needed (what we might call “proof of scale”). What do these look like when they’re achieved, and how are some recent initiatives doing?
Libraries increasingly provide a wide range of publishing activities, but are there some areas where libraries are not active? It appears that libraries are unlikely to play a large role in publishing that is based on end-user demand.
SHARE’s recent summer meeting provided some interesting insights into the organization’s priorities and its ambition to provide a strong, open, and collaborative infrastructure that will maximize the impact of scholarly research. Reasons to be cheerful indeed!
We often hear that the majority of open access journals charge authors no fee for publication. Is that true? Well, it depends on how you count journals.
A new survey highlights the lack of awareness among researchers for funding agency public access policies.
Predatory publishing is a big and complex problem; so is calling out and shaming deceptive publishers by means of blacklisting. Is that something we should even do, and can it be done fairly, constructively, and helpfully? Yes, and here are some suggestions how.