Applying theories of disruption and change to the scholarly journal publishing industry

CONCLUSIONS

The scholarly publishing landscape has not been disrupted, even though modern technology provides all the elements to do so. The unchanged researcher reward system, which makes publishing in Impact Factor journals the most important tool to get promotions and funding is the most important reason for this. The prestige of journals and their content is so important that modern technology cannot substitute traditional publishing outlets, because it has not proven to increase research impact.

The biggest limitation for change is the researcher reward system. As long as promotions and funding, as well as university rankings, depend on publications in Impact Factor journals (or other usage and citation-based databases) researchers have no incentives to change the landscape. The digital revolution and OA is a disruptive innovation for libraries, whose main responsibility used to be providing their researchers access to content. Driving the change towards an OA landscape is a role that librarians have taken upon them. By influencing funders to implement OA mandates, the change is now policy driven. This aligns with the philosophy that research paid-for by the taxpayer’s money should be available to the taxpayer. However, one could also say that funding bodies/governments allocate a certain budget to research and research communication, and the main objective of spending the latter budget should be to provide researchers with the best option to communicate their research to a relevant audience. Interestingly publishers invest a lot in improving findability/search, while librarians seem to worry more about providing content via university repositories, which are not better in the search function then the publisher’s platforms. Readers prefer large platforms with all content in one place, which is typically a function that publishers can offer. On one hand one could argue that researchers care about research and should not be bothered with business rules of research communication, and funder mandates can do just that, on the other hand one could argue that researchers are the end-users of this intermediate market, and librarians and funders could become obsolete if the researcher could decide themselves how and where they prefer to publish. Market inertia, especially the end-users (researchers) has prevented a disruptive change.

Publishers are not driving any change but adapt where needed to ensure they survive and thrive. It’s the library community who struggles to properly collaborate and push towards a properly defined new landscape. Although librarians have been forming coalitions for a decent period of time, they are still learning and discovering that together they have a louder voice. It is rather obvious that the library community is less business savvy than commercial publishers. Whether it is a smart move to make funders responsible for the design of the new research landscape is something the industry does not agree on. The question is if they will do a better job than publishers, who are professionals in research communication.

Publishers have taken the right steps to prevent disruptive innovation, by co-opting with the OA revolution. Hybrid journals and OA journals owned by incumbent publishers ensure that the only change is the business model. Impact Factors and peer-review do not change, nor does the journal function. Because of their reach and size, publishers could wait and see where OA was going, before jumping on the bandwagon, and still become the leaders in OA publishing.

According to the theories, OA should be considered a sustaining innovation. No separate divisions were created and publishers have used their existing brands to co-opt with the OA movement. Peer review and the researcher reward system, which heavily depends on publishing in Impact Factor journals, make OA so similar to the subscription model, certainly if librarians remain the payers of APC-fees, that there is no real disruption.

There are only very few people that have the objective to truly change the research communication landscape by getting rid of journals and thus Impact Factors. F1000 being the best example.

The author feels that all actors in the landscape should redefine their aims and put research impact on top of their priority list. By co-opting and creating a strategy for gradual change, towards a landscape that improves the researcher rewards system as well as uses modern technology to unlock the full potential of research, the system could improve.Academic publishers make huge profits on scholarly journals while using old technologies. There are new technologies like the Internet that could make the system much cheaper and achieve the full potential of scholarly publishing. There is an Open Access (OA) movement that wants to change the business model and ensure free access to research articles.

Executive Summary

By not changing the researcher reward system and unclear goals of the OA movement as well as unclear funder policies and intervention, OA and the internet have not had the opportunity to improve the scholarly communication industry. The global reach of publishers with strategies to focus on content quality and growth, in combination with increased usage and analytical tools, as well as acquisitions on start-ups that might become a threat to them, helps them to continue to add value to the landscape.

Librarians and funders have focussed too much on idealistic goals and should ensure there are clear, measurable policies that truly help researchers and society at large. The Open Science movement is about a change in culture in the complicated global landscape.

The slowness of change has ensured publishers have prepared for possible future OA scenarios and researchers inertia (due to lack of proper incentives), as well as librarians renewing subscription agreements has helped publishers to remain commercially healthy.

Disruption is unlikely to happen due to the complicated landscape where no player feels disruption would be good. Funders are the likely candidate to disrupt the industry, which means it would happen by government control.