The Scholarly Publishing Crisis

Why is scholarly publishing in crisis?

• Sharply rising journal prices
• Consolidation of the publishing industry through mergers and acquisitions
• Diminishing publishing opportunities for scholarly monographs
• Increased publisher control over access due to information licensing and copyright law changes
• An ever growing information universe, with new electronic information resources and specialized journals

Changing Scholarly Communication

There are a growing number of efforts to change how scholarly communication works to make it more affordable (or freely available) and to make it easier for scholars to use information with minimal restrictions.

• The open access movement is making journal articles and other types of scholarly information freely available with minimal use restrictions
• Open access journals are freely available worldwide
• Institutional repositories and disciplinary archives provide free access to article e-prints and other information
• New journal publishing initiatives offer lower-cost versions of high-priced journals
• Some publishers provide free access to back issues after a time delay
• Government agencies are taking action to encourage or require authors to make e-prints available
• Author copyright agreements are becoming more liberal or authors are negotiating to retain rights

What Scholars Are Doing and Saying

What the UH Libraries Are Doing

Selected Resources

Transforming Scholarly Communication Symposium (2006)

What You Can Do

• Understand Copyright
• Retain Copyright
• Publish in Journals with Liberal Self-Archiving Policies
• Publish in Open Access Journals
• Self-Archive E-Prints in Disciplinary Archives
• Influence Publisher Policies
• Establish New Journals or Migrate Existing Ones
• Support Change

Transforming Scholarly Communication Weblog

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Open Access News Postings

Read current postings from Peter Suber's Open Access News Weblog. The latest postings are below.

Open Access Update Postings

Read current postings from a variety of open acess Weblogs. The latest postings are below.