Scholarly Communication: Publishing Models

What is the Scholarly Publishing Crisis?

 The conflict between traditional publishing models and reduced library budgets has led to a loss of access to scholarly literature for researchers. Subscriptions to traditionally published journals can be exorbitant - often thousands of dollars for an annual subscription.

Some alternatives:

Fee-based open access journals

In contrast to the traditional "reader pays" publishing model, the "author pays" model entails the publishers charging fees to authors, then providing open access to content.

Example:

PLoS ONE

SpringerOpen

"Pay-per-page" model

In this model, publishers receive full system capabilities for a group of editorial and production users, with access to all system features and only pay for the number of final PDF pages produced, and not for galleys, HTML files, etc.

Example:

Really Strategies: Pay-Per-Page Service

Subsidized, or "no fee" open access journals

Frequently utilizing direct or indirect subsidies from institutions and/or grants, the majority of open access journals do not charge publication fees (Suber, 2006; Shieber, 2009). Some have revenue streams from advertising or reprints.

Examples:

Philosophers' Imprint "Edited by philosophers - Published by librarians - Free to readers of the Web"
— University of Michigan Library

Rasenna: Journal of the Center for Etruscan Studies
— ScholarWorks, UMass Amherst Libraries

And, taking a new direction in open access journals, Vectors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular is peer-reviewed and is realized in a multimedia format

Institutional/subject repositories

An online, central location for the collection, organization, dissemination, and preservation of the scholarly and research output of an institution or of a single discipline or several related disciplines. They "have the potential to serve as tangible indicators of a university's quality and to demonstrate the scientific, societal, and economic relevance of its research activities, thus increasing the institution's visibility, status, and public value" (Bailey, 2008).

Examples:

ScholarWorks — UMass Amherst Libraries

ESENCe (Ethics in Science and Engineering Clearinghouse Beta) — NSF and UMass Amherst Libraries

InterNano — National Nanomanufacturing Network

PubMed — U.S. National Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Health

arXiv.org e-Print archive — Cornell University Library

RePEc — A volunteer collaborative effort

Changing relationships with publishers

Scholars can use addendums to publisher agreements to protect their author rights.

"What's hot and cooking in scholarly publishing."

• Use your Author Rights - don't lose control of your work.
• Learn about Open Access to scholarly materials.
• Become informed about Copyright and Fair Use issues.
• Understand the Citation Impact of open access publishing.

These two PDF documents provide further insight into new directions in scholarly publishing: