From: Peter Suber <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2016 13:42:16 -0400

Harvard Library publishes report on converting subscription journals
to open access

August 5, 2016

The Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC) is
pleased to announce the release of a comprehensive literature review
on strategies for converting subscription journals to open access.

In the spring of 2015, the OSC commissioned the research from David
Solomon, Mikael Laakso, and Bo-Christer Björk, who completed it in the
spring of 2016. We posted a preliminary draft online for a four month
public-comment period, and asked a distinguished panel of 20
colleagues to add their own comments.

The authors identified 15 journal-flipping scenarios: 10 that depend
on article processing charges (APCs) and 5 that dispense with APCs.
For each one they give examples, evidence, and their assessment of its
strengths and weaknesses. The examples come from all scholarly niches
by academic field, regions of the world, and economic strata.

This comprehensive review of diverse approaches is the report’s
strength. Not every flip was a success, and not all the flips that
were successful using one scenario would have been successful with a
different scenario. But there were successes under every scenario and
in every scholarly niche. Journals that picked a scenario that fit
their circumstances were able preserve or enhance their readership,
submissions, quality, and financial sustainability.

The invited panelists represent a wide range of relevant experience
and expertise, including OA and non-OA academic publishing, fee-based
and no-fee OA publishing, for-profit and non-profit OA publishing,
society and non-society OA publishing, the global north and global
south, the sciences and humanities.

The overall questions were: What has already been done? What
conversion methods have been tried or proposed? What has been the
outcome for submissions, readership, quality, impact, and finances?
Which conversion scenarios have good track records, and in which
scholarly niches? When journal publishers consider a move to OA, what
options and evidence should they take into account?

The research was made possible by a grant to the Harvard Library from
the Arcadia Fund.  We thank both the Arcadia Fund and the Harvard
Library for supporting this research.

Text of the report
https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/27803834

Journal-flipping project home page
https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/journal-flipping

View this announcement online
https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/programs/journal-flipping/report-released


..... Contact info .....

Peter Suber
Director, Office for Scholarly Communication
Widener Library
Harvard University
[log in to unmask]
bit.ly/petersuber