Finding sustainable growth in OA | The Bookseller

"It’s often said that change creates opportunity, and there’s no doubt that open access (OA) represents a major change for scholarly publishers. However, pinpointing the opportunities it creates is harder than it first appears. "A factor that I think is limiting open access’s continued growth is the lack of clean, clear, collected data," explains Deni Auclair, chief financial officer and senior analyst at Delta Think, a consulting and advisory firm focussed on scholarly communications. She estimates that the OA market is growing at 10-15% a year, and represents somewhere between 3 and 6% of the total academic journals market—but actionable data for individual players often remains elusive. The big publishers have research groups of two or three people working solely on the open access market, notes Auclair.

Small wonder, then, that others may struggle to identify and carve out a niche. Auclair therefore advises publishers to look carefully at the actions of competitors, seek external advice, and take account of macro-level trends: 'To make really strong, strategic decisions, you have to understand the dynamics of the entire marketplace.'"