Session Type

Event

Start Date

29-4-2021 11:15 AM

End Date

29-4-2021 11:55 AM

Keywords

Open Access, Transformational Agreements

Abstract

Nearly 20 years after the Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda Declarations on open access, the global academic community continues to struggle toward realizing its objective of an open information environment in which the world’s scholarly and scientific literature is freely available and at the service of society to accelerate research, enrich education and lay the foundation for a common, global intellectual exchange. Championing the cause, stakeholders in some geographic contexts have succeeded in delivering open access publishing options for their research outputs by fostering highly-regarded, locally-developed journals, platforms and repositories, yet a an enormous portion of the world’s scholarly literature continues to be published in subscription journals with mounting paywalls. To address this lacuna, many institutions and national consortia have begun to negotiate transformative agreements as a strategy to transition those journals from closed to open, repurposing former subscription expenditures to cover open access publishing costs and basing their negotiations on the principle that such agreements should be cost-neutral. But just what does cost-neutral mean in developing and transition economies? How does the current subscription expenditure relate to their publishing trends? Does transitioning the business model underlying scholarly journals from subscription to open access merely move the barrier from “pay to read” to “pay to publish”? Keen to better understand the financial implications of transformative agreements in and on Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), the Open Access 2020 Initiative LMIC Working Group has been investigating this issue, engaging researchers, librarians and consortium leaders through the EIFL network. OA2020 is an initiative of research performing organizations from around the world who adopt strategies to transform scholarly journals from closed to open, and EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) works with libraries to enable access to knowledge for education, learning, research and sustainable community development. Through this collaboration, key insights from librarians, data analysts, library consortia coordinators, and researchers have been incorporated into practical recommendations the working group is eager to share!

Because of the highly collaborative nature of our work, the presenters will present together, trading off to highlight different aspects of the overall project. Rick Burke, Executive Director, SCELC, will moderate this session.

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Apr 29th, 11:15 AM Apr 29th, 11:55 AM

Where is the Social Democracy in Subscription Paywalls? Effects and Impact of Transitioning Journals from Subscriptions to Open Access on Researchers in Developing and Transition Economies

Nearly 20 years after the Budapest, Berlin and Bethesda Declarations on open access, the global academic community continues to struggle toward realizing its objective of an open information environment in which the world’s scholarly and scientific literature is freely available and at the service of society to accelerate research, enrich education and lay the foundation for a common, global intellectual exchange. Championing the cause, stakeholders in some geographic contexts have succeeded in delivering open access publishing options for their research outputs by fostering highly-regarded, locally-developed journals, platforms and repositories, yet a an enormous portion of the world’s scholarly literature continues to be published in subscription journals with mounting paywalls. To address this lacuna, many institutions and national consortia have begun to negotiate transformative agreements as a strategy to transition those journals from closed to open, repurposing former subscription expenditures to cover open access publishing costs and basing their negotiations on the principle that such agreements should be cost-neutral. But just what does cost-neutral mean in developing and transition economies? How does the current subscription expenditure relate to their publishing trends? Does transitioning the business model underlying scholarly journals from subscription to open access merely move the barrier from “pay to read” to “pay to publish”? Keen to better understand the financial implications of transformative agreements in and on Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), the Open Access 2020 Initiative LMIC Working Group has been investigating this issue, engaging researchers, librarians and consortium leaders through the EIFL network. OA2020 is an initiative of research performing organizations from around the world who adopt strategies to transform scholarly journals from closed to open, and EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) works with libraries to enable access to knowledge for education, learning, research and sustainable community development. Through this collaboration, key insights from librarians, data analysts, library consortia coordinators, and researchers have been incorporated into practical recommendations the working group is eager to share!

Because of the highly collaborative nature of our work, the presenters will present together, trading off to highlight different aspects of the overall project. Rick Burke, Executive Director, SCELC, will moderate this session.