Science Europe report looks at accelerators and obstacles to Open Access

Science Europe, an association of European Research Funding Organisations (RFO) and Research Performing Organisations (RPO), based in Brussels, has published a workshop report on "Challenging the Current Business Models in Academic Publishing: Accelerators and Obstacles to the Open Access Transition". The report looks at the bundles of journal subscriptions offered by publishers and acquired by libraries, the so-called ‘Big Deals’, one of the dominant business models in academic publishing. According to the report, these bundles are a highly-disputed business model that needs to be further analysed before ‘Big Deals’ can be used as an instrument to implement and increase Open Access, or dropped as an approach altogether.

The report is based on discussions at the workshop ‘Challenging the current business models in academic publishing – Accelerators and obstacles to the Open Access transition’, organised on 26 and 27 April 2017 by Science Europe in collaboration with the European University Association (EUA) and the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER). The workshop and its report are intended to trigger further expert discussions on the current business models and their alternatives, as a follow-up to the April 2016 Science Europe Briefing Paper on ‘Open Access Business Models and Current Trends in the Open Access Publishing System’.