Scholarly Communication Issues

While newly created journals are being built to better withstand the current environment of escalating expense by incorporating structural elements that promote sustainability and wide (or at least wide enough) access, established journals that are particularly important to the fields of study for which they report must also be a part of the scholarly communication strategic evolution if the scientific record is to be supported in fullness and depth. For this reason, Oxford Open's efforts to find ways to carry existing OUP journals through the scholarly communications crisis intact and possibly even in a more robust state than before is an important element of the overall range of revolutionary efforts being made to preserve and promote scholarly journals now and in the future.

Of the four initiative foci given on the Oxford Open web page, the first is to "[e]xplore the viability of Open Access as a long-term publishing model that is financially sustainable (for publishers, institutions, and authors)." That language aligns well with the SPARC imperative to "[stimulate] creation of better, faster, and more economically sustainable systems for distributing new knowledge" to the advantage of four stakeholder groups, identified by SPARC as researchers, publisher partners, libraries, and society.

The inclusion in SPARC's statement of society as a stakeholder reflects the broader commitment that SPARC has to scholarly research from the cradle to the grave, so to speak; from the intertwined processes of absorption and creation (as researchers read others' work and allow that existing knowledge to shape new inquiries) to the wider effects of publicized research as it permeates into society in general, beyond boutique educational and research communities, through popular literature and emerging products and processes.

If reducing the cost of a journal directly or indirectly increases access to the material in that journal, then Oxford Open's success in the pricing arena could benefit not only the three groups Oxford considers as its stakeholders but also the larger set of users, in the broadest sense of the word, that SPARC supports.

posted by Maria Sochor