Frankfurt Book Fair 2022: A 'Seismic Transformation' in Scholarly Publishing

"On August 25, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced a landmark new public access policy set to be in place by the end of 2025. Questions remain as to how the policy directive will translate in practice, particularly with regard to licensing and funding arrangements. But there can be little doubt it will accelerate the transition to open access business models among scientific and scholarly publishers.

“We don’t know enough about the funding situation to make plans in earnest, so we’ll have to wait and see how the bigger federal agencies put the memo’s requirements into practice,” observes Sybille Geisenheyer, Director of Open Access Strategy and Licensing at the American Chemical Society (ACS). Nevertheless, Geisenheyer sees the OSTP policy announcement as a positive step. “I honestly welcome it, because it means we have a clear understanding of the direction of travel.” 

With the OSTP making clear that it expects to see “business model innovation” from publishers, so-called transformative agreements are likely to play a key role. And while these agreements come in a range of flavors, including so called read-and-publish and publish-and-read and other models, the common goal is to transition the payments made by libraries away from subscription access toward open access publication...."