Sustainability of Open Access Services
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-09-21
Alma Swan
Knowledge Exchange, (Sep 2012)
From the Executive summary: Although some services that support Open Access have developed a sustainable business model, many started as projects and continue to run on recurrent project funding or goodwill. If these are critical components of the evolving scholarly communication system the foundation of Open Access is vulnerable. The Knowledge Exchange Open Access Working group commissioned this study as part of a larger programme of work to look at the issue of sustaining key services into the long term. In this document we report on Phases One and Two of the programme. Phase One was a scoping exercise, carried out mainly through a literature review and an extensive stakeholder interview exercise. Phase Two was a stakeholder consultation and engagement exercise. The aim was to engage stakeholders with the work programme so that they could contribute their views, feel some involvement with the work and have a voice in the thinking about future scenarios. Three strategic areas are identified as having particular potential for future work. These are embedding business development expertise into service development; consideration of how to move money around the system to enable Open Access to be achieved optimally; and governance and coordination of the infrastructural foundation of Open Access.
A number of recommendations, both high-level and practical, for further work are made around these strategic areas.