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Session Recording

Fully OA has consequences: The impact of “read” institutions on fully OA publisher business models Recording

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In 2019, SCELC’s Jason Price introduced the problem of the “read to publish funding gap” to Charleston attendees at the last Charleston Conference before the COVID pandemic. cOAlitions S was one year into its paradigm shifting announcement of Plan S, the comprehensive (mostly European) multi-funder announcement mandating that publications funded by the member funders must be fully and immediately open (https://www.coalition-s.org/why-plan-s/). Plan S’ tight timeline (originally mandating compliance by 2021 and now pushed back to January 1, 2025) spurred a flurry of activity from both publishers and libraries on how to facilitate compliance.

In Jason’s 2019 Charleston Conference talk, it became clear that one major source of scholarly communication funding – subscriptions paid by teaching-intensive (so called “Read” institutions because they read more than they publish) – could potentially exit the system when the majority of content is openly available. What does that mean for subscription publishers attempting to make the transition to a fully open portfolio? What role do publishers see for “read” institutions in a fully OA world?

This interactive panel discussion will explore the challenges facing different types of publishers and libraries as they work out the financial, ethical, and existential dilemmas of this transition. The discussion will bring together non-profit and society publishers -- those most hard hit by Plan S -- to discuss the engagement of Read institutions in fully OA models.

In 2019, SCELC’s Jason Price introduced the problem of the “read to publish funding gap” to Charleston attendees at the last Charleston Conference before the COVID pandemic. cOAlitions S was one year into its paradigm shifting announcement of Plan S, the comprehensive (mostly European) multi-funder announcement mandating that publications funded by the member funders must be fully and immediately open (https://www.coalition-s.org/why-plan-s/). Plan S’ tight timeline (originally mandating compliance by 2021 and now pushed back to January 1, 2025) spurred a flurry of activity from both publishers and libraries on how to facilitate compliance.

In Jason’s 2019 Charleston Conference talk, it became clear that one major source of scholarly communication funding – subscriptions paid by teaching-intensive (so called “Read” institutions because they read more than they publish) – could potentially exit the system when the majority of content is openly available. What does that mean for subscription publishers attempting to make the transition to a fully open portfolio? What role do publishers see for “read” institutions in a fully OA world?

This interactive panel discussion (moderated by PLOS, a native OA publisher) will explore the challenges facing different types of publishers and libraries as they work out the financial, ethical, and existential dilemmas of this transition. The discussion will bring together non-profit and society publishers -- those most hard hit by Plan S -- to discuss the consequences of Read institutions' participation in a fully OA future.

John is working to deliver business transformation of the Cambridge University Press Journals program and achieve the organization’s aim of becoming a majority open access journals publisher. A central element of his current role is building and developing partnerships across the Americas that support and enable this transition. 

Scott Delman is the Director of Publications at the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Prior to joining ACM, Scott served in a number of senior management positions at Springer and Kluwer, including Vice President for Publishing at Kluwer Academic Publishers and Vice President for Business Development at Springer. 


In addition to his current role at ACM, Scott is actively involved in the governance of a number of non-profit scholarly publishing industry organizations, including Crossref (formerly as Board Chairman and Treasurer), CHORUS (formerly as Treasurer), arXiv (Member Advisory Board), as a Member of the Portico Advisory Committee, and as a Member of the Society Publishers Coalition Council (SocPC).