This extract is from Outsell Inc‘s excellent weekly newsletter (sub. req.) on the B2B info industry..I am taking the liberty of posting an important item in the newsletter in full (hope you guys don’t mind!): “We’ve been predicting that the conflict between academic publishers and open-access publishing models will be to scholarly publishing what the Napster and RIAA conflicts have been to music. High-profile players on both sides have recently issued major policy statements in an escalation of a smoldering conflict between publishers and academia.
– Two of the big players on the open-access side have joined forces. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the new Public Library of Science (PLoS) have agreed to promote support for open access in the library and university world. SPARC will try to extend its influence by educating faculty about the new model.
– In the meantime, commercial scholarly publishers are also putting up a united front. Last week the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers issued a manifesto that reaffirmed its members’
commitment to building greater access to scientific publications, and warned against a wholesale abandonment of existing publishing practices.
The economics of scholarly publishing can best be described as broken and dysfunctional. Fewer and more powerful publishers are in ongoing struggles with their biggest customers, characterized by boycotts and dramatic contractual battles. Until the fundamental structural problems in the publishing industry are fixed, there will not likely be an end to the barrage of open-access alternatives. And it may already be too late. A few years ago, SPARC and others started presenting alternatives that were interesting but faced an uphill battle in their quest to replace traditional publishers. Fast-forward to today; the traditional publishers haven’t advanced while the open-access folks have started to crack the code and gain high-profile support in academia, as highly regarded authors and editors fall in line.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post