The Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study

"Up to now, open access has been largely an economic addition to the traditional subscription model among research libraries. What has yet to be fully worked out is a viable financial model for libraries to transition from subscription access to open access, and in particular a model that will apply equally well across the disciplines and their organizing bodies. With this study, we seek to investigate and pilot a new level of cooperation between libraries, journals, societies, and presses in making this transition. It begins with the assumption that the in-excess of ten billion dollars being spent on journals today is more than enough to finance a transition to open access. We do not need to introduce new money into the picture. Libraries, journals, societies, and presses may be able to arrive at cooperative ways of utilizing existing funding to provide open access for all. A cooperative model of scholarly publishing holds the promise of not only introducing new levels of transparency and rationality to publishing costs, it would bring together stakeholders who share a common purpose in advancing scholarly communication and who have the areas of expertise and infrastructure supported needed to do it ... Over the next two years (2015 - 2017), the Open Access Publishing Cooperative Study aims to: Gather financial data from journals and libraries to establish current investment levels in professional quality publishing; Consult with stakeholders – research libraries, scholarly journals, scholarly societies, presses, funding agencies, and others – about perceived gains and risks of a co-op approach to open access funding, governance, and structure; and Develop and assess open source co-op publishing infrastructures for running pilot studies to evaluate impact on scholarly and public quality of this approach to open access publishing ..."