Crossing the bridge: moving the open access conversation beyond the academy

Author: Steve Lodge, VP Services, Emerald Publishing

Our Open Lab, established to explore alternative models for open access (OA), has been running for seven months, and we have been immersing ourselves in the OA discourse. Truthfully, it feels like the conversation is reaching an impasse.

So much of the debate is centred around benefits to the research cycle (It helps reproducibility! We can build on it!) to the academic reader (Access won't be constrained by subscriptions!) and the funder (Everyone can see the outputs of what we've funded!). These are entirely valid and valuable reasons that should not be abandoned. But, near exclusive promotion of these benefits when not underpinned by a sustainable platform to make them universally achievable is stifling progress.

Tangible benefits need communicating to researchers to make more informed choices about where to publish. Many funders are not telling authors why they should publish OA, only that they must. But if an upward career trajectory and community recognition hinge on publishing outputs in an as-yet still 'closed' publication, then researchers become caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Meanwhile, pressure on library budgets, already bursting at the seams, will inevitably constrain innovation. Publishers are tasked with finding new models in which no one pays or pays much less. Most surveys, focus groups, conference talks and whitepapers come to remarkably similar conclusions. The system is fundamentally flawed; there is a cost to publishing academic content which is both discoverable and can be trusted, whether that outlay is on reading or publishing. Readers and producers of academic content lack the funds, and publishers cannot simply trim those costs without making compromises on discoverability and research integrity.

There are voices missing from the conversation. Government – beyond idealistic mandates that spark pandemonium, and the most notable absence from the debate – beneficiaries of academic research outside academia.

At Emerald, our mission is centred on creating a sustainable, equitable research and publishing ecosystem which is open to all. And that research is conducted to address real societal problems. Research impact happens when academic research informs a change, however big or small, outside of academic walls (though there is, of course, an ongoing and important role for theoretical and 'blue sky' research). Our focus has always centred on the social sciences, particularly business, management and education; disciplines that are comparatively under-funded. Through all the debate around OA, we cannot lose sight of the principal beneficiaries of getting this right – the CEOs, People Managers, and City Planners – who can make informed, positive changes to strategy, policy, product and business modelling by implementing research findings.

A better understanding of how businesses are using academic research to inform decision-making might allow us to move forward in the debate through a different lens. How far downstream does the research go before it gets picked up by those who can use it meaningfully? How many rounds of remixing and transformation have outputs gone through before their outcomes are realised?

We want to find out. We want to step out of the echo chamber and seek input from those who might be able to forge a realistic path towards open access. The system is not working, and the end beneficiaries of the move to open access are not in this loop. We want to provide research to end-users in the form they will use it and develop a sustainable framework for making it happen.