on the other, it can feel to many authors that open access has not improved the practice of publishing at all. This is a reminder of the lessons we saw from other victories in Chapter 1 – victory doesn’t feel like victory should. However, it isn’t always this way, and there are examples of good practice, as well as a range of opportunities, which will be explored next.
New Models of Publishing
A number of publishers have sought to redefine (or reset) the relationship with academic authors to a more cooperative one. The traditional model of physical printing meant that part of the contract was about the creation of a product. In a digital environment where templates can be used to easily create an online journal, the focus shifts away from the product and more to the services the publisher offers.
Publishers such as PLoS and Ubiquity offer Gold OA, but at relatively low cost, and with waivers for those who cannot afford to pay. Such publishers often use open source software (reinforcing the influence of that domain in open education), such as Open Journal Systems (OJS) or Ambra. The use of such software over bespoke, proprietary systems developed by commercial publishers offers considerable financial benefits (Clarke 2007) and also gives access to a community of developers.
The fee paid to such publishers is essentially to cover a set of services, including copyediting, administration and dissemination (for example registering journals with databases). This allows universities to make a clear decision as to whether the cost of these services is reasonable compared with publishing themselves. This brings us onto a second model: that of the university press.
