Read & Publish contracts in the context of a dynamic scholarly publishing system
Publication date: 15 Juli 2020 | Report language: EN
A study on future scenarios for the scholarly publishing system
The European University Association wants to better understand what could happen if scholarly read & publish agreements, and other forms of transformative agreements, continue to pave the way for open science. Technopolis was asked to map the status quo, analyse the dynamics in the publishing market and develop scenarios.
Based on the set of scenarios defined in this study, it seems that the scholarly publishing market is most likely to move towards open access platforms over the long-term. Whether these are publisher-owned or community-owned may largely depend on the actions of stakeholders in the market. For now, the publisher-owned platform scenario is perceived to be the most realistic. In this scenario, current journals and their distinguished brands could be maintained. Both, publishers and scholarly stakeholders seem to benefit from this scenario. Moving beyond the current journal format will require a departure from the current researcher performance assessment mechanisms of institutions; while there is a strong movement to reduce reliance on bibliometric indicators associated with journals, practical implementation of new, alternative policies is a slow process.
