What comes after the Elsevier boycott? The answer might be found by following the ‘Green’ road to open access | British Politics and Policy at LSE

“The recently launched campaign to boycott publishing, editing and reviewing papers for any of Elsevier’s stable of journal titles, instigated by Tim Gowers, has been gathering steam over the last couple of weeks... The boycott is based on... [1]The prices Elsevier charges for access to its titles, and the resulting profits it makes. [2] Elsevier’s so-called “bundling” of subscriptions, whereby libraries are forced to buy titles in large packages... [3] Elsevier’s support for the Research Works Act (RWA), a piece of legislation which seeks to roll back open access to scholarly research by reversing US government funder mandates, such as the mandate to deposit National Institute of Health-funded research to PubMed Central. The boycott has been criticised for being incoherent, a view which I have a certain amount of sympathy with, given that Elsevier are by no means the only publishers supporting the RWA, and that they certainly aren’t the only publishers engaging in charging high and ever-increasing prices for journal subscriptions ( the so-called “Serials crisis”), or in bundling subscriptions. What can’t be denied is the scale of the public relations disaster for Elsevier... Richard Poynder has argued that Elsevier’s lack of a public face has exacerbated this problem (though there issome evidence they are now making a concerted effort in this regard) – and even when Elsevier’s spokespeople attempt to defend their practices, they come across as secretive by being unwilling to divulge their prices, as Steven Poole has pointed out. A recent statement from the company has provoked more ire by stating that “We oppose in principle the notion that governments should be able to dictate the terms by which products of private sector investments are distributed, especially if they are to be distributed for free...’ So what are likely to be the long term effects of the boycott?...  Cameron Neylon has argued that, within ten years, traditional models of journal publishing will be gone... Neylon suggests that so-called “Gold Open Access” is the likely model on which the new landscape will be predicated... Martin Weller suggests that it should be that venerable institution, the University press, which might be one of the players to step into the journal (or journal-like) publishing breach... Ten years is a long time, though, so how can cash-strapped academics make their research openly accessible in the meantime, thereby maximising its dissemination and impact? I would argue that the best way is to follow the “Green” road to open access, by archiving research in your university’s Institutional Repository (full disclosure: I manage City University London’s repository City Research Online)...”