Reflecting on the past month of industry conferences and customer roundtables, I feel energized and inspired by the work of publishers, particularly society publishers, to advance their commitment to open access (OA) in thoughtful measure.
Although developments in artificial intelligence and research integrity—including but not limited to their intersections with OA—tend to dominate stakeholder discourse as of late (and for good reason), my colleagues and I observe many publishers sharpening their focus on making more science openly available, continuously adjusting their strategies and models to meet the needs of authors and institutions.
We note three common themes coming out of recent in-person and virtual publisher interactions, as well as our own data analysis, that could prove useful to the broader scholarly community.
- Author experience is paramount. This may be obvious, but it requires significant time and effort to assess holistically across systems that support the entire author journey. Automation and interoperability help tremendously, with contextualized workflows and high-quality metadata acting as catalysts.
1. B. High-quality metadata is the backbone of the author experience. This is particularly true in disambiguating author affiliation to discern OA funding entitlements at scale. Use of persistent identifiers and investment in metadata management is on the rise among publishers and service providers, but many acknowledge there’s room for improvement.
2. A mixed-model landscape is a reality for many. Publishers are adopting different OA models across customers based on factors such as geographic location and the nature of their business with consortia and individual institutions (publication output vs. content consumption). Achieving business terms that are viable for both parties and that can scale as OA grows remains a priority.
3. There’s progress in making OA publication more diverse. Over the past several years, we have supported half a million unique authors on behalf of 30+ publishers on the RightsLink for Scientific Communications platform. The chart below represents authors who published at no cost under OA agreements or other assistance programs, as well as those who paid APCs either out-of-pocket or up front for later institutional reimbursement. Of course, there’s more work to be done, but this picture shows a promising start.
Global Author Coverage in RightsLink
It’s a thrilling time to be part of the fabric supporting this major market transition. Getting face time with publishers to understand not just where they are now, but where they are headed, is invaluable to inform the direction of CCC’s Scholarly Communications Suite. We look forward to exciting developments to come in 2024 and beyond!