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December 2007
If you’ve been following the great open access (OA) debate, you’ve probably noticed some recent changes in the landscape. For one thing, there is a more mature and nuanced tone to the discussion, not to mention a lower decibel level.
To be sure, all is not sweetness and light. The basic issue—is OA the answer, and if so, to what?—remains unresolved. And there continue to be strong feelings on both sides of the controversy. A hard core of true OA believers continues to dismiss any criticism of OA and to prophesy its inevitable, imminent success. Meanwhile, hard-core critics continue to associate OA with the collapse of scholarly publishing.
But while the OA extremists are still with us, they no longer dominate the discussion, which has to a large extent moved on to more practical concerns. What was once a strident verbal mêlée about morality has evolved into a still vigorous but cooler discussion of business models, experimentation, and the interpretation of evidence.
This is my impression, in any event, after attending a recent seminar, “Evolving Business Models in Scholarly Publishing,” in Washington, DC, on October 22. Sponsored by the North American Chapter of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), this program brought together an impressive cast of speakers, who reported on recent developments and current publishing experiments under way at their organizations, a diverse group encompassing professional societies, university presses, and commercial publishing houses. (Full disclosure: I currently chair the Steering Committee of the North American Chapter of ALPSP and helped promote this event; however, I was not one of the meeting organizers.)
Now in truth OA was only one of the topics on the agenda at this meeting, but that is itself noteworthy. It suggests that OA is only one of the options being considered by scholarly publishers as they seek ways to cope with the impact of rising publication costs, increased research output, the growth of the Internet, and the near certainty of a future in which too few library dollars pursue too many increasingly expensive publications. And this, I would submit, is exactly what is occurring. Searching for ways to preserve and sustain their publishing programs, scholarly publishers—commercial and nonprofit alike—and societies are experimenting with a variety of new approaches, of which OA is but one example.
One result is a great degree of experimentation with OA, perhaps a bit more so among publishers than societies, whose missions are broader and more complex. Increasingly, publishers are offering some or all of their authors a choice of conventional or OA publication, with the latter requiring payment of a fee that typically ranges from $1,500 to $3,000. Furthermore, at least one major commercial publisher apparently now sees OA as the only viable method for starting a new journal in today’s challenging environment.
But is OA “working”? The presenters couldn’t say, but the experimentation is under way, and the results will inevitably follow. And then maybe we’ll finally find out whether OA can deliver on its proponents’ promises or will turn out to be simply another detour on the road to scholarly publishing nirvana.—IER