Robert W. Boissy, Business Models for Scholarly Serials, Serials Review, September 2005. An editorial introducing a special issue on business models for scholarly journals. Excerpt:
Some business models are concerned with commercial gain, others are concerned with sustaining a non-profit operation, and many models combine elements to create a working whole. Increasingly we see new open access and author-driven models that are better termed distribution models than business models --as they have little or no business component at all. In an age of desktop publishing software, megabytes of free Web hosting, and distance education-driven electronic resource needs, the market seems wide open for almost any direction that scholarly communication wants to go. Publishers must now seek to minimize barriers and maximize the amount they can offer without cost to the readership. Business models that limit format options and granularity options are dangerous. All of these developments point to the eventual dominance of the electronic journal in the scholarly marketplace....Models involving free online access to the public with underwriting and resources supplied by authors, educational institutions, voluntary contributions, and other non-traditional fees are gaining visibility, even if the available content is still at modest levels. Free pre-publication access is often a component of even the most traditional publishing models.
After this orienting editorial, the issue has four articles on scholarly journal business models --none focusing on OA.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
