2015 Charleston Library Conference

The various business models underpinning gold OA publishing today are models by necessity. There is a system inefficiency and hold-up based on:
1. the majority of budget paying for scholarly publishing is tied up in large journal subscription deals
2. it is hard to transition a content business to OA, whether or not one supports the principle, and therefore content businesses are slow to make the switch.

There’s been much discussion about the efficacy of OA models. But those discussions are severely limited because there is not equal opportunity in the market to experiment with OA models. Since the early movers BMC and PLOS, more recent experimentation with models beyond simple APCs is limited to small organizations and startups willing to take the risk (e.g. PeerJ, UC Press, OLH) or large organizations willing to subsidize everything (e.g. eLife’s backers).

How can we appropriately judge which newer models are effective, with low scale and little room for experimentation? Do the current experimenters think they have it solved now, or do they know their plans/models will change in the future? If they will change, when? What will trigger this? And can we move beyond models driven by necessity?

This session will explore some of the most interesting new OA initiatives and efforts efforts to bring viable OA products and programs into the market. The panelists will be provocative, and lively, audience-aided, discussion will cover successes in, obstacles to, and industry hang-ups about, achieving optimal OA models that are truly by design.