WHAT’S NEXT FOR OPEN ACCESS?

Answers from Industry Expert Mark Ware, Ware Consulting

To map out the road ahead, Mark Ware, Director and Owner of Mark Ware Consulting, shares insights from his recent research on the open access (OA) market.

Scholarly publishing has been on the fast road to change.

While we’ve all seen the signposts for OA for some time now, the road ahead will include curves that affect publishers, researchers, and the market as a whole.

We will soon see gold OA models that are more efficient, like:

• Offsettingandbundling• Membershipmodels• Pre-paymentoptions• Institutionalaccounts• Paymentmanagementsystems

Publishersreportasharpening focus on services for researchers/authors and on data services, as open research creates a whole new environment.

However, issues arise when you combine that growth with the pressure on library budgets.

Publisherssaythegrowthinarticlevolume– 3 or 4% annually – is manageable.

Other forces driving the future of OA include:

• Socialpressures• Technologypressures• Politicalpressures

These all intersect to change research behavior:

• Shiftingattitudestowardinformationsharing• Greatertoleranceforinformalmaterials

Researchers are shaping the debate about OA.

• 5 to 6 million researchers havejoinedResearchGate

• 16 million-plus researchers have joined academia.edu

The scholarly publishing sector is likely to see continued consolidation.

Economies of scale are steering publishers toward sharing tools, social networking and collaboration platforms. The greatest opportunity is for a small number of leading players.

However, publishers overall say the system is in evolution, not revolution.

The journal retains its relevance and importance intheresearchcommunity.Indeed,ifanything,it’s more important than ever.

With lower barriers to entry, OA is driving increased competition between publishers, and it is increasingly the norm among new journals.

StandardizedmetadataaroundGoldOAprocesses could help institutions get a better understanding of spending.

TheGreenOAlandscaperemainsfragmented,withdifficult discoverability and unpredictable quality.

Publishers,institutions,andfunderscould develop a model that better serves researchers without compromising the subscription model.

A range of new services and processes are enhancing the traditional research cycle (gathering, analyzing, and publishing data).

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OA will share the road with subscriptions, more or less indefinitely.

Standards will be critical to:

• AchieveaviableOAmarketplace

• Drive efficiency improvements for publishers and institutions

• Createtheopportunityfor wholly new services

To learn more about the OA road ahead, download “10 Predictions for 2016.”

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