The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing - Ithaka S+R

"Today, the scholarly publishing sector is undergoing its second digital transformation. The first digital transformation saw a massive shift from paper to digital, but otherwise publishing retained many of the structures, workflows, incentives, and outputs that characterized the print era. A variety of shared infrastructure was developed to serve the needs of this first digital transformation. In this current second digital transformation, many of the structures, workflows, incentives, and outputs that characterized the print era are being revamped in favor of new approaches that bring tremendous opportunities, and also non-trivial risks, to scholarly communication. The second digital transformation requires shared infrastructure that is fit for purpose. It is our objective with this paper to examine the needs for shared infrastructure that will support this second digital transformation.

Through these two transformations, the scholarly communication sector has grown only more complicated. At the same time, the differences between scientific (STEM) journal publishers and humanities and social sciences (HSS) publishers have grown only starker; the major commercial publishers and adjacent major STEM societies face a somewhat different set of opportunities and imperatives than the mostly smaller HSS societies as well as the university presses and commercial publishers that focus on HSS journals and monographs. The sector also includes a variety of research institutions such as universities, whose researchers are the authors of most scholarly publications, and which act strategically in scholarly communication mainly but not exclusively through their libraries.[1] Also included within the sector are consortia of these research institutions, many of which may have their roots as buying clubs but are increasingly taking on an even more strategic role in providing systems and negotiating innovative deals that stand to transform scholarly communication. And of course the sector includes funders, many of which have pursued efforts to transform scholarly publishing towards more open and in some cases less commercial directions. It additionally includes institutional and discipline-specific repositories and other alternative distribution models, operated by organizations in all of the foregoing categories, that in some cases complement the existing publishing models and in others attempt to build alternatives to them. It is no surprise that looking across these sector participants, and others, there is often a lack of strategic alignment.

A robust and nimble infrastructure is imperative to support the vital work of scholarly communication and effectively and efficiently meet the emerging service needs of different stakeholders. As we outline in the report, all kinds of publishers, repository services, and related providers that offer publishing services (hereafter collectively, “publishing organizations”) rely on various elements of infrastructure in many key parts of their work, and it forms a foundational part of their technology stack and service framework. A good deal of valuable infrastructure is currently provided on a shared basis, whether on commercial or other terms, although, as we recognize in the report, whether various components of the infrastructure are shared or standalone can vary across categories and market conditions...."