Recasting the learned periodical in open access: from kingmaker to community content as king | Nexa Center for Internet & Society

Silently, learned periodicals have seen their nature shift between 1950 and 1990: society and academic publishers have been displaced by international, commercial, publishers. Digitization has allowed revisiting the processes accompanying learned communication, and has given rise to the Open Access Movement. 

After first resisting this trend, commercial publishers (and others) have come to embrace open access, but, so doing, have also tried to reshape it to their advantage (e.g. the hybrid journals). 

Meanwhile, funding agencies, both private and public, are beginning to see that their role too can shift. Deconstructing the "publishing function" is opening up new, improved, vistas for learned communication, while offering the promise of a better economic context for research institutions, libraries, and most learned societies.