Is the Open Access Movement All Talk and Little Action?

"The Week in Libraries, April 27, 2018: Among the headlines this week, changing the narrative on university press publishing; FSU says it will bail on its "unsustainable" Elsevier contract; and, is open access making a difference yet?

...This week, Library Journal’s 2018 Periodical Price Survey went online, showing yet again that libraries continue to face the same financial pressures they’ve faced since the dawn of the e-journal. In other words, for an “unsustainable” system, the system seems remarkably sustained.

“At times the library world seems mired in the equivalent of the story line of the movie Groundhog Day,” the authors write, citing, the lingering impact of the Great Recession, flat or shrinking library budgets; promotion and tenure systems based upon publication; the persistence of “big deal” bundles; and average annual serials price inflation approaching 6%—well ahead of the Consumer Price Index.

As always, there is a lot to chew on in the survey. But what really caught my eye is how little impact the open access movement appears to be having on the market.

“The growth of Gold Open Access—by which authors, libraries, universities, or funding agencies pay a fee to commercial publishers for the article to be made freely available to all worldwide without additional charge—addressed access to content,” the authors note, “but compounded budget issues by adding additional costs.”

The LJ survey goes on to cite a report issued in February by the European University Association, in which more than 80% of respondents said they consider “publishing in conventional journals” a high priority. And it also cites a brief issued in February by the Canadian Association of Research Libraries, titled “Responding to Unsustainable Journal Costs,” which called out the research community’s persistent focus on “publishing in prestige journals.”

Such findings reflect what we’ve been hearing in other venues. In an editorial last month in NatureIndex, for example, a group of University of California librarians stressed that “libraries, scholarly societies, and authors…must make critical choices about how we spend our money.”

The authors of the LJ survey concur. “As long as this situation continues,” they write, “the library community will remain in the Groundhog Day loop.”

Check out the full report on the Library Journal web site."