Return of the Big Brands: How Legacy Publishers Will Coopt Open Access | The Scholarly Kitchen

"With Open Access Week soon to be upon us, this seems like a good time to review how the OA world has evolved and where it is going. By my count we are well along in the third phase of open access publishing, with phase four rapidly coming into view. Of course, not everybody will accept a four-part typology, and they shouldn’t. Perhaps there are five stages, or ten. Or perhaps there is but one, which is continuously and inexorably unfolding. Call this the Calvinist Corollary: research literature that is free and accessible to one and all was predestined when God created the world. Her plan could be seen even in the earliest eukaryotic cells if only one looked closely enough. From this vantage, advocates of subscription-based publishing models seem to be walking on their knuckles while the upright Citizens of the International Research Community lead us to the fulfillment of Her plan. Typologies reflect a worldview, and mine is simply that tools are useful when they further our understanding and should be tossed out when they do not. I am prepared to jettison this taxonomy the moment Stage Five swims into view...."

Read the full article for one author's perspective on the five stages of OA, what history has shown has happened with OA, and what may well yet happen with libraries, publishers, aggregators, and OA.