Change ahead: How do smaller publishers perceive open access? | Impact of Social Sciences

peter.suber's bookmarks 2019-04-08

Summary:

"Small and medium-sized publishers also tend to operate much less profitably than large global publishers, which makes it difficult for them to to build new infrastructures and develop innovative offerings....

More than three quarters of all small and medium-sized publishers who took part in the survey published books and journals in the humanities and social sciences, reflecting the fact that global publishing companies dominate the market in natural sciences....[W]hilst all the participants in the survey publish scholarly books (usually fewer than 100 per year), most of them publish academic journals as well....

A vast majority (90%) of the 33 survey participants reported a slow or significant increase in Open Access requests from their authors. One third believed that Open Access will become the future standard of scholarly publishing; another 60% assumed that it will complement existing services....

Nearly half of respondents preferred Gold Open Access as a business model to Green and Hybrid Open Access. This cohort, as to be expected, also turned out to be more open-minded towards and experienced with Open Access publishing than the circa 30% who prefer Green Open Access....

Only a third of respondents reported making their Open Access publications accessible via established platforms such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), and no more than 27% say they have a self-archiving policy. Only 20% of the publishers rated their staff’s knowledge of Open Access as “very good” and there are considerable differences depending on disciplines and publishing programmes....

Most expect a decline in sales as a consequence of the free availability of “their” works and associate Open Access with legal uncertainties, unclear business models and pressure from politicians and funders. However, a considerable number of publishers apparently have also not yet paid much attention to the issue. Only 67% of the participants state that they are familiar with the content of the “Berlin Declaration“, a fundamental document of the Open Access movement, and 43% say the requirements for Open Access publications are unclear to them....

Overall, “traditional” publishers are more open-minded than might be expected about the topic of Open Access and for good reason: funder announcements, such as Plan S, that they will move to only accepting Open Access publications are rapidly becoming more effective. Scholarly Publishers who do not adapt their services to this changing demand, or who are unaware of it at all, are likely to have a rude awakening in the future."

Link:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/01/15/change-ahead-how-do-smaller-publishers-perceive-open-access/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.new oa.publishers oa.attitudes oa.germany oa.plan_s oa.austria oa.unfamiliarity oa.switzerland oa.gold oa.green oa.hybrid oa.surveys oa.books oa.humanities oa.repositories oa.ssh oa.journals

Date tagged:

04/08/2019, 12:58

Date published:

04/08/2019, 08:58