Transforming an academic publisher | Research Information

"The conversation in the industry has noticeably moved from ‘whether’ to ‘how’, eliciting a rich mix of excitement and trepidation. The fundamental basis of publishing is still largely in place: content dissemination underpinned by the proven principles of copyright, licensing and payment. But the potential for the internet to utterly transform how content is distributed, and all of the ramifications of this change, is still at an early stage of being realised. 

Our ability to disseminate research outputs as open research, instead of putting them behind paywalls, has become tangible. There are, however, a bunch of other trends and pressures that are stimulating speculation about how scholarly communication will evolve in the next few years, and so complicating our decisions about how to deliver the open research transformation....

[One challenge:] When we (or pretty much any sizeable publisher) looks at a map of where our readers and authors are, there is only partial overlap....

The second major challenge I want to highlight is the need to avoid creating new barriers to authorship...."