The open access journal as a disruptive innovation « Omega Alpha | Open Access
Omega Alpha | Open Access 2012-12-14
Summary:
"I admit it. As a humanist scholar I have not been much inclined to read books or articles on economics. I mean, what could be more boring, right? And all that math. Well, my inclination has been slowly changing since I began writing this blog. My level of sophistication is pretty basic, and I still try to avoid the math whenever possible. But the economics of academic publishing, particularly journals, has become strangely compelling to me as I have learned more about open access and the dissemination of scholarly research as a digital product in an online environment. My first exposure came just a few months after starting the blog. I read an interesting article by Caroline Sutton inCollege & Research Libraries News (December 2011) entitled 'Is free inevitable in scholarly communication? The economics of open access.' Sutton applied the economic theory popularized by Chris Anderson in his 2009 bookFree: The Past and Future of a Radical Price to argue that the online journal as a digital product operates on a marginal cost of production basis that will inevitably drive the price of additional copies toward zero. I wrote a review of Sutton’s article here. I was so intrigued by this economic concept applied to scholarly publishing that I also read Anderson’s book. I wrote a review of Free from the context of scholarly publishing here ... In a similar vein, I recently read an article by David W. Lewis in College & Research Libraries (September 2012) entitled 'The Inevitability of Open Access.' Lewis has chosen to view open access, and in particular, 'pure Gold' open access (journals), through the lens of another economic (business) theory as described in the work of Harvard professor Clayton Christensen, seminally in his 1997 book The Innovator’s Dilemma (reprinted by Harper Business, 2011). Christensen deals with 'the failure of companies to stay atop their industries when they confront certain types of market and technological change' (p. xi). These companies fail not because they ignored sound management principles, but paradoxically—and hence the dilemma—because they didn’t. '[M]any of what are now widely accepted principles of good management are, in fact, only situationally appropriate. There are times at which it is right not to listen to customers, right to invest in developing lower-performance products that promise lower margins, and right to aggressively pursue small, rather than substantial, markets. This book derives a set of rules … that managers can use to judge when the widely accepted principles of good management should be followed and when alternative principles are appropriate. … I call [these alternative principles] principles of disruptive innovation.' (p. xv, emphasis his) I found Lewis’ appropriation of Clayton Christensen’s economics of disruptive technological innovation applied to open access journals interesting enough to go and read Christensen’s book for myself. Afterward, I came back to Lewis’ article, and re-read it with greater understanding. I find his argument persuasive..."
Link:
http://oaopenaccess.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/the-open-access-journal-as-a-disruptive-innovation/From feeds:
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » Omega Alpha | Open AccessOpen Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com