Open Access: Should one model ever fit all?

The arrival of the internet threatened to disrupt publishing substantially, and in many ways it has done so. But the changes we have seen have, until very recently, been more related to only the delivery of research via a different medium – electronic versus print. There has not yet been a widespread disruption of publishing business models, nor has there been a full exploitation of the innovative potential of the internet to reshape how research could be published. But that is now changing.

The scene was set for the conflict between commercial and academic interests that would play out in the 21st century.

The business of publishing is now on the brink of substantial disruption, with a massive wave of innovation and diverse approaches forcing a rethink of what it means to publish research, with the aim of making research open access (OA) – ie. free to read immediately and without restrictions on reuse.

Yet the diversity of ways that OA is being achieved in different parts of the world means that despite similar longterm objectives, policies and practices can differ quite substantially and in some cases be in conflict.

How a closed model of publishing became the (expensive) norm

The volume of published research has been growing exponentially since the end of the Second World War. Early publishing was largely organised on an ad hoc basis and, before the mid-20th century, was centred largely around and organised by scholarly societies, whose main purpose was to share information among their members.

With an increase in research activity, there was an increasing imperative to share research outputs more widely, and in turn the need arose for