Business Model Developments

Author(s):  
Joost Kollöffel

Academic publishing is a 'need to have' process that is very important in the academic world. This chapter focuses on the business models that were/are/might be used to finance the processes and the innovation in scholarly communication. What sparked the serials crisis? Is Open Access publishing feasible? Why are there predatory publishers? Can scientometrics and altmetrics be made into saleable products? These types of questions are answered in this chapter, where the focus lies on the financial feasibility of the main processes that occur in academic publishing.

LOGOS ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-26
Author(s):  
Heiko Hartmann

The traditional business model of academic publishers is in peril. Besides the consequences of digitization, publishers have to cope with new habits of media reception, a multitude of new substitutes, legal uncertainties, and the threat from open access. German publishers are reacting in very different ways to the challenges of the market for scholarly literature. While some smaller independent publishers are still concentrating on print titles and barely offer any electronic products, others rely on a modern digital strategy, intensive internationalization, and a large portfolio of e-products including open access formats. Focusing on the humanities, this essay analyses the current situation of German academic publishers and asks how they can succeed in the future when proven business models are no longer accepted by new market players.


2016 ◽  
Vol 77 (5) ◽  
pp. 654-667
Author(s):  
Nathan Hall ◽  
Sara Arnold-Garza ◽  
Regina Gong ◽  
Yasmeen Shorish

This investigation explores scholarly communication business models in American Library Association (ALA) division peer-reviewed academic journals. Previous studies reveal the numerous issues organizations and publishers face in the academic publishing environment. Through an analysis of documented procedures, policies, and finances of five ALA division journals, we compare business and access models. We conclude that some ALA divisions prioritize the costs associated with changing business models, including hard-to-estimate costs such as the labor of volunteers. For other divisions, the financial aspects are less important than maintaining core values, such as those defined in ALA’s Core Values in Librarianship.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandros Nafpliotis ◽  
Evi Sachini ◽  
Victoria Tsoukala

See video of the presentation.The present contribution concerns a case study of open access publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Greece, its history and effect in helping the local researcher community transition from a print-only mode of work to online working environments and in rendering Greek publications and scholarship more relevant to the international scholarly community. The presentation provides Greek context in scholarly communication with an emphasis on HSS; it elaborates on the goals of the project and the challenges that were encountered and addressed during its implementation. One of the main reported successes of the project is the increased awareness among Greek researchers in HSS of the capabilities and potentials of modern scholarly communication systems and the creation of a demand originating from the corresponding research communities themselves for the continuation and expansion of similar activities in the future.The project, which started in 2007 with the transition of three print journals in the humanities to an online and print format and online working environment, culminates with the development of an online platform that provides access to content and services from a single point in the web, ePublishing.ekt.gr. As part of EKT’s services, we systematize and upgrade the journals’ policies according to international standards, provide an online working platform and training, digitize and release in open access academic articles (2,555 articles in established journals, published by small, non-profit, academic/scholarly society publishers, so far), gradually provide DOIs, and concentrate (apart from articles) on books and conference proceedings but in the future we’ll also include purely online books.In a nutshell, we have focused on providing publishers of journals in HSS a range of comprehensive services which are constantly updated and improved in the light of the developments in scholarly communication, and which foster the internationalization, visibility, and preservation of research in these fields. We have also concentrated on increasing the awareness of the Humanities and the Social Science communities on open access and electronic publishing. It is worth mentioning here that the aforementioned services constitute only one of our activities relating to HSS. Another major and relevant project concerns the Greek Reference Index for Publications in the HSS, a comprehensive registry of Greek peer-reviewed journals that registers metadata, provides access to content where this is possible, and measures a variety of indicators.We continue our efforts to provide a comprehensive digital framework for HSS research in Greece, and, given that we are aiming at further expansion in our range of services and further growth in our output, we are also exploring a variety of business models that will help us achieve our goals. Particular effort will be placed in further researching the financial implications of this endeavour and choosing the appropriate business models for the future, as well as promoting awareness about digital scholarship and OA to researchers. Future plans include the intensification of our efforts to publish more e-journals and the exciting new prospect of publishing OA monographs in HSS, in collaboration with institutions in Greece and abroad.


2021 ◽  
pp. 096100062110095
Author(s):  
Saimah Bashir ◽  
Sumeer Gul ◽  
Shazia Bashir ◽  
Nahida Tun Nisa ◽  
Shabir Ahmad Ganaie

The article tries to highlight the evolution and conceptual framework of institutional repositories and their impact on the academic and scholarly circles in terms of better visibility, wider audience and earlier communication of research. The characteristics associated with the institutional repositories are also highlighted, which makes them stand out from the crowd in the family of open access scholarly platforms. The study is based on the examination and evaluation of the articles published across various peer-reviewed journals showcasing numerous dimensions of institutional repositories, ranging from their evolution to open scholarly acceptance. A preliminary search on institutional repositories was carried through two well-renowned indexing/abstracting databases of peer-reviewed literature, Clarivate Analytic’s, Web of Science and Elsevier’s Scopus. Search terms like institutional repositories, institutional research output, open access repositories, green open access, open access, open access publishing, open access initiatives, digital libraries, directory of open access repositories, open DOAR and scholarly communication were run across the databases for article retrieval, and the relevant studies were extracted accordingly. To make the study more comprehensive and current, the studies citing the retrieved articles were also consulted. The study reveals that the benefits associated with institutional repositories are manifold. They recounter users with the information which was otherwise unavailable due to the reasons ranging from the non-availability of supplementary information (like unpublished reports and working papers, multimedia and audiovisual items, learning objects, other special item types, bibliographic references, datasets, lecture notes and so forth) to the paywall/subscription models adopted by commercial channels of scholarly communication. Furthermore, the social, research and technological factors tend to be the main motivating factors for their wider acceptance by the scholarly community at global, national, organizational, and individual levels. They enhance the preservation of institutional research output with increased viewership and prestige apart from achieving a potential research impact. They, in a real sense, have abrogated the unilateral assault orchestrated by the commercial publishers on the author community by democratizing their scholarly voices via open and barrierless scholarly platforms. They are the future of the academic output of an institution/author as they perform successfully within the constitutional boundaries of scholarly and academic publishing, thus safeguarding the rights and claims of every academic actor. Given the importance of institutional repositories for a more democratic, barrierless and impactful information communication, they are for sure going beyond various scholarly circles by breaking the traditional and rigid walls of scholarly endeavours. The study presents a useful overview of the progression of the institutional repositories, their intended purpose and how they serve to fill the gaps in scholarly publishing and meet the needs of the wider academic community. The article summarizes in one place a concise overview of the use and impact of institutional repositories. The study is also an eye-opener for scholars interested in the research in the field of institutional repositories.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla Hertil Lindelöw

Fully gold Open Access (OA) publication channels are still hold to be of inferior quality compared to channels offered by publishers with traditional subscription business models, albeit less and less so. The threat of predatory publishers looms on one side, and on the other most OA publishers haven’t been around to gather prestige for so long. Still, there seems to be a steady advance. For example, OA publication channels may now be found at level two (indexing the channels perceived as having most academic prestige in a certain subject) of the Norwegian Publication Model (NPM).In an earlier survey, I investigated the publication patterns of researchers at Swedish universities with focus on their gold OA publishing in journals. The publication patterns were contrasted with the occurrence of OA journals in NPM. 29 % of the DOAJ journals were present as approved channels in NPM. DOAJ is frequently mentioned as the most comprehensive OA journal indexing service in the world. At level one, 14 % of the listed journals were OA, whereas only 2 % of level two journals were OA. Out of the DOAJ-journals included in NPM, only 1 % made it to level two. This is probably explained by the situation described above; OA journals are often new to the scientific publishing market, and therefore they haven’t had the time to gather academic prestige.The OA journals that researchers at Swedish universities published were almost all of them present in DOAJ. 7 % of these were at level two. This pattern seems to imply that researchers are trying to fulfil demands of OA publishing from funders, while at the same time trying to gather prestige for their own researcher career. This poster aims to further explore these results, with focus on the 7 % journals at level 2. Which journals can be found here, and what is the distribution? Which research subjects are involved?


Author(s):  
Markus Wust

This qualitative study investigates how faculty gather information for teaching and research and their opinions on open access approaches to scholarly communication. Despite generally favorable reactions, a perceived lack of peer review and impact factors were among the most common reasons for not publishing through open-access forums.Cette étude qualitative examine comment les membres du corps professoral recueillent l’information pour l’enseignement et la recherche, et leurs opinions envers les approches de la communication scientifique à libre accès. Malgré des réactions généralement favorables, le manque perçu de révision par les pairs et les facteurs d’impact comptent parmi les motifs habituellement évoqués pour ne pas publier sur ces tribunes à libre accès. 


2009 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
F.W. Dulle ◽  
M.K. Minishi-Majanja

This research explored the awareness, usage and perspectives of Tanzanian researchers on open access as a mode of scholarly communication. A survey questionnaire targeted 544 respondents selected through stratified random sampling from a population of 1088 university researchers of the six public universities in Tanzania. With a response rate of 73%, the data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The study reveals that the majority of the researchers were aware of and were positive towards open access. Findings further indicate that the majority of researchers in Tanzanian public universities used open access outlets more to access scholarly content than to disseminate their own research findings. It seems that most of these researchers would support open access publishing more if issues of recognition, quality and ownership were resolved. Thus many of them supported the idea of establishing institutional repositories at their respective universities as a way of improving the dissemination of local content. The study recommends that public universities and other research institutions in the country should consider establishing institutional repositories, with appropriate quality assurance measures, to improve the dissemination of research output emanating from these institutions.


2005 ◽  
Vol 57 (6) ◽  
pp. 481-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Rowlands ◽  
David Nicholas

PurposeThis paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the ongoing debate about the potential of open access publishing and institutional repositories to reform the scholarly communication system. It presents the views of senior authors on these issues and contextualises them within the broader framework of their journal publishing behaviour and preferences.Design/methodology/approachA highly representative online opinion survey of more than five and half thousand journals authors, building on an earlier (January 2004) benchmarking study carried out by CIBER.FindingsSenior researchers are rapidly becoming more informed about open access publishing and institutional repositories but are still a long way off reaching a consensus on the likelihood that these new models will challenge the existing order, nor are they in agreement whether this would be a positive or a negative development. Disciplinary culture and, to a less extent, regional location are key determinants of author attitudes and any policy response should avoid “one‐size‐fits‐all” solutions.Research limitations/implicationsThis survey reflects the opinions of senior corresponding authors who have recently published in a “top” (i.e. ISI‐indexed journal) with 95 per cent confidence. The findings should not be generalised to represent the views of all authors in all journals, open access or otherwise.Originality/valueThe journal publishing sector is facing enormous challenges and opportunities as content increasingly migrates to the web. The value of this research is that it provides an objective, non‐partisan, assessment of the attitudes and opinions of more than 5,000 senior researchers, a key stakeholder group, and thus contributes both to the development of public policy as well as more realistic commercial strategies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 571-594
Author(s):  
Emily Hudson ◽  
Paul Wragg

This article asks whether the catastrophic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic justifies new limitations or interventions in copyright law so that UK educational institutions can continue to serve the needs of their students. It describes the existing copyright landscape and suggests ways in which institutions can rely on exceptions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA), including fair dealing and the exemption for lending by educational establishments. It then considers the viability of other solutions. It argues that issues caused by the pandemic would not enliven a public interest defence to copyright infringement (to the extent this still exists in UK law) but may be relevant to remedies. It also argues that compulsory licensing, while permissible under international copyright law, would not be a desirable intervention, but that legislative expansion to the existing exceptions, in order to encourage voluntary collective licensing, has a number of attractions. It concludes by observing that the pandemic highlights issues with the prevailing model for academic publishing and asks whether COVID may encourage universities to embrace in-house and open access publishing more swiftly and for an even greater body of material.


2007 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Nascimento Souto

New and alternative scientific publishing business models is a reality driven mostly by the information and communication technologies, by the movements towards the recovery of control of the scientific communication activities by the academic community, and by the open access approaches. The hybrid business model, mixing open and toll-access is a reality and they will probably co-exist with respective trade-offs. This essay discusses the changes driven by the epublishing and the impacts on the scholarly communication system stakeholders' interrelationships (publishers-researchers, publishers-libraries and publishers-users interrelationships), and the changes on the scientific publishing business models, followed by a discussion of possible evolving business models. Whatever the model which evolves and dominates, a huge cultural change in authors' and institutions publishing practices will be necessary in order to make the open access happen and to consolidate the right business models for the traditional publishers. External changes such as policies, rewarding systems and institutions mandates should also happen in order to sustain the whole changing scenario.


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