While advocates of Open Access publishing have tended to focus on the social benefits of this new publishing model, there are a number of economic advantages inherent in open access publishing that are equally compelling. I am the Senior Publishing Developer for the Hindawi Publishing Corporation, and speaking as a commercial publisher who has recently embraced open access, I can honestly say that it is the most promising business model available to small and mid-sized publishers today. In the current academic publishing market there are a number of factors that make it very difficult for smaller publishers to compete with the major publishing houses like the Springer Group and Elsevier. First, the market is highly insulated from economic competition due to the way that the subscription system is structured. Second, as libraries are forced to cut their serials spending, smaller publishers who are not protected by "Big Deal" schemes are the first to suffer. Finally, it is very difficult for smaller publishers to successfully launch new journals, since the barrier to entry in the toll-access system is so high....Over the past few years, even the wealthiest libraries have been forced to cancel subscriptions due to a widening gap between library budgets and journal prices. While "Big Deal" packages protect the major publishing houses from these cancellations, small and mid-sized publishers have been struggling to maintain subscriptions....Launching new journals can easily become a vicious circle for smaller publishers: nobody wants to publish their best work in a journal without many subscribers, but nobody wants to subscribe to a journal that doesn't receive high-quality submissions. Since open access journals do not limit their readership to a small group of subscribers, they can attract both authors and readers immediately....At the moment, Open Access may not be economically viable in every discipline, but in many well-funded fields it can be a very successful publishing model. The accomplishments of the Public Library of Science and BioMed Central have shown that open access can work in the life sciences, but I believe that this is only the beginning. By the end of 2005, we at Hindawi Publishing expect to have launched open access journals in numerous fields including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, materials science, biotechnology, and the geosciences.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/26/2005 01:47:00 PM.
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.
