A report on the future of independent and scholarly publishing webinar by the Scholarly Kitchen

Abstract

The open access movement continues to gain pace, resulting in increasing regulatory requirements that constrain business models. Plan S itself may only have a modest immediate effect on industry‐wide sustainability but is the clearest indication of the ‘direction of travel’ for our industry yet. Recent negotiations between publishers and consortia represent a ‘bigger deal’ and may therefore lead to even greater economic power for large commercial publishers. Societies have a greater role than merely allowing researchers to get credit for and disseminate their work. A one‐size‐fits‐all model of open access may threaten the sustainability of other community services managed by learned societies. Do not panic about Plan S! Look to the needs of your community and offer a balanced portfolio of publications and services.

Reforming science publishing

“…Library‐based subscription and reader‐pay models make more sense than author‐pay models, although once again, scientific knowledge should be free for authors and readers as well. The sustainability of scholarly publishing may be threatened by the dominance of a one‐size‐fits‐all OA model (Jones, 2020). Many of the current pitfalls of scholarly publishing might be the consequences of biased academic evaluation systems and career development criteria that put authors under permanent pressures to publish more, creating an unhealthy work atmosphere and a publication frenzy that may lead to the amplification of salami‐slice papers phenomenon; unethical practices in study design, data collection or data fabrication; and unscrupulous authorship practices (ghost, guests, gift, or grift authorship).…”