Flipping, not Flopping: Converting Subscription Journals to Open Access | The Scholarly Kitchen

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-03-04

Summary:

"The question of whether – and, if so, when and how – to ‘flip’ a traditional, subscription-based journal to open access (OA) is one that comes up time and again in meetings with our society partners. It’s also something that funders sometimes like to suggest as a quick route to a more open world – “Why not just convert all your journals to OA?” they ask. Needless to say, it’s not quite that simple. The SCOAP3 initiative to (ultimately) make all journals in the field of high energy physics openly available is probably the best-known and biggest attempt at flipping en masse. And, to quote Ann Okerson, SCOAP3 National Contact Point for the US, in this Scholarly Kitchen interview last year, 'To test converting an entire sub-discipline to OA is no small thing' ... So perhaps in time a more wholesale approach to flipping journals will be feasible but, for now, doing so on a case-by-case, journal-by-journal basis is more likely to be the norm. Even then, however, the process is far from straightforward, as the UK Open Access Implementation Group notes in its online guide, Gold Open Access for Learned Societies?, which includes this beast of a flowchart summarizing the decision-making process.  Wiley, like other publishers, has been experimenting with flipping some journals, both proprietary and society-owned, to OA. For the right titles, it’s proving successful – and there are some real benefits. Moving to OA can help a good but slow-growing journal succeed more quickly. It can be an opportunity to experiment with gold OA without the risk and cost of starting from scratch. No longer being confined by page budgets means you can publish more.  But there are also some potential drawbacks. Gold OA journals are still viewed with distrust by some people (as seen in this 2013 CIBER Research/University of Tennessee study), which could put off potential authors and readers, and ultimately lead to a drop in usage and Impact Factor (not to mention revenue). Plus there’s almost always an initial financial risk involved for the publisher and/or the society.  So how do you pick the right title, capitalize on the benefits, and minimize the risks? ..."

Link:

http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2015/03/04/flipping-not-flopping-converting-subscription-journals-to-open-access/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.conversions oa.guides ru.sparc15

Date tagged:

03/04/2015, 08:27

Date published:

03/04/2015, 10:54