The Future of Academic Publishing: Continuity or Discontinuity?

Stephen Pinfield

Information School, University of Sheffield

SCURL, SLiC, JISCThe 13th Annual eBooks Conference: Happily Ever After? Glasgow, 5 September 2014

“It is dangerous to make

predictions,

especially about the future!”

(Danish Proverb)

The Future of Academic Publishing: Questions

1. When will ‘Open’ reach its limits?

2. To what extent will new ‘community’ players enter the publishing market?

3. To what extent will ‘publishing’ through social networking interactions come to be trusted?

4. Will alternative forms of quality control/assessment emerge to rival pre-publication closed peer review?

5. Will sustainable and convenient business models and delivery mechanisms for educational publishing emerge for individual and library purchases?

6. Will ‘publication’ come naturally to include contributing data, rich media etc as well as text to an networked scholarly infrastructure?

7. What cultural changes are necessary?

8. How will the roles of different stakeholders need to change?

Outline

1. Key TrendsMajor developments focused on HE and technology

2. Key RequirementsMajor continuities and discontinuities, particularly from a university perspective

3. Key QuestionsMajor areas of change and uncertainty

Key Trends

HE Trends

• Massification

• Globalisation

• Funding

• Assessment

• E-everything

• Impact

• Openness

Technology Trends*

• Social

• Mobile

• Cloud

• Information

* Gartner Inc.

• Connecting with other social, economic, environmental trends

• Implications for publishing

Internet of ThingsGamification

Augmented Reality

BPM

“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and

underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

(Bill Gates)

What Do Universities Want From Publishing?*

Mission of universities

• Research

• Teaching and learning

• Outreach

Academic publishing

• Research publishing

• Educational publishing

• Grey publishing

* Pinfield, S. (2004). What do universities want from publishing? Learned Publishing, 17(4), 305–311.

Universities want publishing to support their mission

• Explicit ‘wants’• ‘Instinctive’ demand

• ‘Informed’ demand

• Implicit ‘wants’

“Want”

What Do Universities Want From Publishing?

“Universities”• Different institutions

• Research-led

• Teaching-led etc

• Different stakeholders• Support services (library, research support etc)

• Academic departments

• Different disciplines• HSS disciplines

• STM disciplines

• Different roles• Producers

• Purchasers

• Consumers

“Publishing”• Changing notions of ‘academic

publishing’ • From formal dissemination of

quality-controlled content

• To informal social networking

What Do Universities Want From Publishing?

Priorities

• Impact

• Access

• Quality

• Affordability

• Reward

/ Continuities • Academic impact• Societal impact

• Access to read• Access to reuse• Access to connect and search• Access to archive

• Quality-control – peer review• Quality markers – ‘brands’

• System-wide• For particular stakeholders

• Direct financial rewards• Indirect – recognition economy

• Sustainability

What Do Universities Want From Publishing?

Priorities

• Impact

• Access

• Quality

• Sustainability

• Reward

Issues / Discontinuities

• Open access

• New market entrants

• Social media

• Open peer review

• Innovative business models

• Mobile devices

• New networked scholarly infrastructures

• Changing cultures and roles

/ Continuities

The Future of Academic Publishing: Questions

1. When will ‘Open’ reach its limits?

2. To what extent will new ‘community’ players enter the publishing market?

3. To what extent will ‘publishing’ through social networking interactions come to be trusted?

4. Will alternative forms of quality control/assessment emerge to rival pre-publication closed peer review?

5. Will sustainable and convenient business models and delivery mechanisms for educational publishing emerge for individual and library purchases?

6. Will ‘publication’ come naturally to include contributing data, rich media etc as well as text to an networked scholarly infrastructure?

7. What cultural changes are necessary?

8. How will the roles of different stakeholders need to change?

The Limits of Open

• OA is moving into the mainstream but is still not ‘mature’ in terms of:• Markets and business models

• Services and delivery mechanisms

• Funding and business processes

• Take-up and academic acceptance

• Most open publishing models have to date assumed a well-funded STM-based system of scholarly communication• Challenges for HSS

• Challenges for monograph publishing

• etc

• Limits on other Opens?• Open Data

• Open Educational Resources (MOOCs)

• etc

When will ‘Open’ reach its limits?

New Players

• OA business models and ubiquitous technology lower barriers to entry to the market

• Result in new publishing ventures• Innovative market entrants: e.g.

− PeerJ− F1000 Research

• University publishing initiatives

• But also ‘Predatory’ publishers

• Changing nature of the journal• Mega-journals e.g. PLOS ONE

• Declining importance of the journal title (cf articles)

• Existing players are also adapting

To what extent will new ‘community’ players enter the publishing market?

Social Media and Trust

• Scholarly communication channels are likely to develop more social networking functionalities

• At present, social media use by academics is patchy without any community-accepted norms

• Social media use is seen as “ancilliary” to formal publishing not a replacement*

• Social computing does not have the quality-control features associated with formal scholarly communication venues and is not “trusted” as such*

• It is unclear whether scholars will develop specialist social media channels or inhabit general ones

* Nicholas, D. et al. (2014). Trust and authority in scholarly communications in the light of the digital transition: Setting the scene for a major study. Learned Publishing,

27(2), 121–134.

To what extent will ‘publishing’ through social networking interactions come to be trusted?

New Forms of Quality Control

• Peer review is widely valued but is subject to a growing amount of review

• Wide variety of approaches:• ‘Narrowing’ peer review e.g. PLOS ONE – review of scientific ‘soundness’ followed by

post-publication metrics-based measure of ‘importance’

• Post-publication open peer review e.g. F1000 Research

• Sequential closed – open peer review e.g. Journal of Interactive Media in Education

• Crowd-sourced comment and open peer review e.g. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics

• ‘Overlay’ journal peer-review e.g. Journal of Digital Humanities

• ‘Stand-alone’ peer review e.g. Peerage of Science – not linked to any particular journal

• etc

Will alternative forms of quality control/assessment emerge to rival pre-publication closed peer review?

Ebooks for individuals and libraries

• Although progress has been made, there are still major difficulties in delivering ebooks to users via library deals, including:• DRM limitations

• Format limitations

• etc

• Users want to consume content on a variety of (mobile) devices but are often constrained

• Users want to reuse/remix content but licences often prevent this

Will sustainable and convenient business models and delivery mechanisms for educational publishing emerge for

individual and library purchases?

“Beyond the Paper”

• “Network-enabled literature” (Neylon, 2012*):• “When we have these three elements, accessibility, rights, and ease of

use, at web scale, then amazing things can happen.”

• “Beyond the paper” (Priem, 2013**):• “The Web opens….windows to disseminate scholarship as it happens,

erasing the artificial distinction between process and product. Over the next 10 years, the view through these open windows will inform powerful, online filters; these will distil communities’ impact judgements algorithmically, replacing the peer-review and journal systems.”

‘The Internet of (Scientific) Things’?

* Neylon, C. (2012). More than just access: Delivering on a network-enabled literature. PLoS Biology, 10(10), e1001417.

** Priem, J. (2013). Beyond the paper. Nature, 495(7442), 437–440.

Will ‘publication’ come naturally to include contributing data, rich media etc as well as text to an networked

scholarly infrastructure?

Cultural Change

• Cultural change in most communities is slow and depends on a wide range of factors

• Academic communities have well-established ways of working which shape values and behaviours

• Values and behaviours are partly determined by incentives

• Policy intervention can have some impact on incentives by encouraging certain behaviours and discouraging others, e.g.

• Reward is currently focused on published outputs

• Rewards may be developed around the range of other behaviours e.g. sharing data

What cultural changes are necessary?

Changing Roles

• Changes in academic publishing is having a profound impact on the roles of different stakeholders and relationships between them including:• Academics

• Publishers

• Intermediaries

• Librarians

• Administrators

• New skills and mindsets are required

• Innovativeness, flexibility and agility are essential

How will the roles of different stakeholders need to change?

Questions and Comments

S.Pinfield@Sheffield.ac.uk