What has not made headlines but is also a noteworthy outcome of transformative agreements is the significant increase in access and readership for paywalled articles that they facilitate.
As the success of Subscribe to Open grows, what are the benefits and limitations of the model?
A history of the rise of coercive media suggests that raising barriers to entry may be a remedy. Could a business model shift do most of the work for us?
Lisa Hinchliffe asks, if the true value is of a subscription is being obscured by over-utilization, should libraries seek to dampen such excess in order to have more appropriate measures of the real value of a subscription?
Even Silicon Valley is finding that recurring revenues (aka, subscriptions) lead to more valuable businesses, while helping smaller companies thrive.
An overview of usage trends across libraries and journals indicates that usage is generally stable or up, archives remain of interest, and consumption doesn’t align with authorship or funding.
Information warfare is both tactical and strategic, with much of its success stemming from the weakened economics of the current information economy. Scholarly publishers have experienced this in many ways, from Google Scholar to predatory publishers to pre-print archives — all answers to the calls for “free information” and all revealing tactical and strategic vulnerabilities as accuracy and facts become luxury items in the information war.
The pendulum for revenues swung from personal subscriptions to institutional subscriptions with the rise of digital options. With growth capped, a new mix of access options is likely to emerge.
The half-forgotten subscription model deserves our praise and renewed attention. In the Digital Age, it has become more popular than ever.
As revenues from alternatives decrease and digital revenue sources prove insufficient, publishers are finding that straight-up asking readers to pay may be the best approach going forward.
The subscription model is more prevalent than ever, but it’s also different in important ways. What can publishers learn and implement?