A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to OA
As digital piracy goes large scale, publishers, libraries, and the open access movement have a lot at stake.
The Illicit Love Affair between Open Access and Traditional Publishing
At the recent PSP conference there was a panel on the cost of complying with the many new open access mandates from funding bodies. The panel explored the cost of compliance and how to reduce those costs. The current regulatory regime is complicated and administratively expensive, but the mandates will continue to be promulgated because the people calling for them are not the ones that have to implement them.
Revisiting: When Is a Feature a Product, and a Product a Business?
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s post on distinguishing between features, products, and businesses. Not all features can become full-fledged businesses. Sometimes the best business case for a feature is to link it to an established business, where it adds value to assets that are already in place.
The Network Model of Publishing
One of the unanticipated consequences of the introduction of digital media to scholarly publishing is that publishing properties increasingly are organized into networks, with one property pointing to another for the benefit of all. This essay describes the network publishing model and comments on some of a network’s characteristics and economic opportunities.
Revisiting: Governance and the Not-for-profit Publisher
Revisiting Joe Esposito’s classic post on how the governance of not-for-profit publishing entities plays a large role in those entities’ success or failure.
Revisiting: Splitting the Difference — Does an Editorial Mutiny at a Journal Do Much Long-term Damage?
The recent editorial board defection from an Elsevier journal brings up issues raised in Todd Carpenter’s 2013 post on editorial boycotts and declarations of independence. They generate a lot of heat, but what do the data say about the actual success of the new journals compared to the journals that were overthrown.
Libraries and Consortia in the Context of a Publisher’s Strategy
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.
What Is “Publishing” if Even a Library Can Do It?
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.
A Single User Account
Academics’ expectations for user experience are set not by reference to improvements relative to the past but increasingly in comparison with their experiences on consumer internet services and mobile devices. The best solution for research, teaching, and learning would be a single account for each user, controlled by that individual, and accepted portably across services and platforms.
The Gatekeeper Strategy in the Library Market
EBSCO is now, through the acquisition of YBP, the largest vendor to academic libraries of both serials and books. This is the beginning of a gatekeeper strategy, which will put EBSCO in a position to mediate a large proportion of the arrangements between publishers and libraries.
Data Curation–The New Killer App
Establishing new citation benchmarks and an international board of academics, Elsevier is poised to take on Thomson Reuters for dominance in the citation metrics market.
The Enduring Mystery of the Academic Book Market
New research on book publishing shows that ebook usage is growing and that the academic and professional segment is maturing, while still growing at a steady pace.
More Creative Commons Confusion: When Does NC Really Mean "Non-Commercial"?
A recent non-controversy once again shows how much confusion exists around what exactly Creative Commons licenses actually mean.
The Context of Scientific Publishing
A presentation to a scientific society on the current environment that STM publishers have to work in. Five issues are identified: regulatory matters, new technology, the structure of the marketplace, competition, and governance.
What Would It Cost to Buy Everything?
What would it cost for someone to acquire a full set of all peer-reviewed journals, including backfiles? This question was put to a number of experts, but there appears to be no answer to it. We don’t know what everything would cost.