Traditional Publishers and the Transition towards Open Access

The entire publishing landscape appears to be slowly but steadily moving towards universal open access. Over the years, traditional publishers have tested out a variety of models to ensure that academic literature can be made openly available in an economically viable manner. These include Pledge to Open for books, Transformative Agreements (aka Read-and-Publish deals) and Subscribe to Open (S2O) for journals, and various forms of Diamond Open Access facilitated by public funding streams. While everybody tends to agree that open access is desirable, it may be the case that every model has both positives and negatives. In this discussion, representatives from four traditional publishers will get together and share their experiences and thoughts about the future. The session will begin with four lightning talks (6–7 minutes each), in which representatives of Springer Nature, Universitetsforlaget, Taylor & Francis Group, and De Gruyter Brill share their experiences with different models of open access publishing. After the lightning talks, there will be a panel discussion chaired by Per Pippin Aspaas, head of Library Research and Publishing Support at UiT and member of the institution’s Library collections budget committee. Timon Oefelein, Head of Academic Affairs – Northern and Central Europe, Springer Nature: “Accelerating open access at scale: addressing the needs of institutions and researchers worldwide.” Nils Ivar Lahlum, Head of Publishing, Scandinavian University Press:“How to prosper in a Diamond Open Access landscape: experiences from a publisher in Scandinavia.” Corinna Mayer, Manager Open Access Journal Transformation, De Gruyter Brill:“Making Open Access a reality for Humanities and Social Sciences journals: S2O as a promising path.” Becky Hill, Head of Open Research, Taylor & Francis Group:“Collaborative funding for Open Access books: reflections on a pilot year.” See our video recording of this session.