Disruption — Are We Seeing a New Type Emerging in Academic Publishing? « The Scholarly Kitchen

“‘Disruption’ sounds sexy, like ‘Inception’ sounds sexy. It also sounds harmless enough — there was a slight disruption at the back of the classroom. But ‘disruption’  has specific business and technology implications, and tracking these to common usage can provide some insights we could miss otherwise.  In a US News & World Report article from June (‘Is the Academic Publishing Industry on the Verge of Disruption?’), the term is used to compare the ‘disruption’ open access (OA) journals might have to academic publishers to how e-books are disrupting the book publishing industry.  But the disruption of e-books isn’t the same as what open access proponents are hoping their efforts will yield.  There are two phases of disruption as postulated by Clayton Christensen — disruptive technology and disruptive innovation. I wrote about these in a post in April. Disruptive technology is often just a harbinger of a disruptive innovation. But I want to refresh things a bit further.    A ‘disruptive technology’ is one that usually preserves the output the market desires (good cars, good light, good journals, good books), but reshuffles the underlying value chain in such a way that some old players are sidelined and some new ones emerge. In our world, online is a disruptive technology for printers, not for publishers. Some printers have left the field, and platform providers have entered. Because technology is very frequently sustaining, even as it drives change, one could argue persuasively that online has been a sustaining technology for academic publishers — preserving its core functions while actually making it more efficient and effective.  A ‘disruptive innovation’ is a market-oriented change, one that revolutionizes by changing the purchasing preferences of the market. The mass-produced Model T changed the purchasing preferences of millions, despite being based on old technology. The disruptive innovation wasn’t the car — it was the assembly line. For music, the disruptive innovation wasn’t the MP3 or digital, but the iPod. In both cases, and many more, the market changed forever because the innovation made the market better. The e-book existed for years before the true disruptive innovation arrived — the Amazon Kindle, with its built-in Whispernet connection at no cost, low-cost books, and so forth. The market responded quickly.  OA is cited in the US News & World Report and elsewhere as the disruption we’re facing. But I don’t see how it fits. It’s not a disruptive technology, because it uses the same technology we all use to reach the majority of our readers and users. So, is OA a disruptive innovation in the academic market?  It’s hard to say, because OA is not one thing, even inside the Gold/Green color schemes...”