As Universities Switch to Online Teaching, Digital Collections of Libraries and Publishers Take Centerstage | Open Research Community

"The importance of Open Access for university libraries and academic publishers is slated to increase, as printed books and in-person access become deemphasized in the COVID-19 context....

In North America, the pandemic onset has accelerated the evolution of university libraries toward closer involvement with supporting the digital access needs of students and researchers. On the one hand, this has spurred the launch of publisher-led projects targeted at the higher education market. On the other hand, scholarly publishers, such as ProQuest, make extra efforts to integrate Open Access into the panoply of their offerings that span both paywalled and freely accessible content (Enis, 2020).

In this respect, Open Access books and resources are likely to demand less copyright compliance management than their closed access counterparts. Additionally, Open Access does not involve the access uncertainty that free access usually does, as journal and book publishers wind down their free access deals with the presence of COVID-19 becoming the new normal. In this context, renewable subscription models gain in uptake, as vendors factor in library budget shortfalls into their product structures (Enis, 2020)...."