The Publishing Industry is Mature, but Publishing Companies are Not | The Scholarly Kitchen

"Yes, Gold open access (OA) has opened up a new revenue stream (the line item in grants for Article Processing Charges), but as has been rehearsed on the Kitchen many times, Gold OA is inherently limited, as not all fields have generous granting agencies behind them. And, yes, new digital tools provide ways to lower costs, but lowering costs is not the same thing as top-line growth and not nearly as desirable....Today we mostly give away our metadata; at some future point we may give away the content to reap the benefits of the control of metadata that is more broadly conceived. Here is a parlor game for publishers — or more likely a drinking game in the bar at one of the industry’s numberless conferences: Come up with a strategy to profit from Sci-Hub by extracting the metadata surrounding it, effectively turning Alexandra Elbakyan into your company’s Goon-in-Chief...."