Reports

Discussion Papers

No.715 Scholarly Communications Revisited: Journal Publishing, Open Access, and Digital-Age Journals

by Masahiro Okada

April 2018

ABSTRACT

The development of digital technology has drastically changed scholarly communication. T he advent of electronic journals has changed the industrial structure of academic publish-i ng. As the market concentration of journal publishing continues to increase, the pricing of j ournals has been dominated and controlled by large publishers. The never-ending rise of s ubscription prices is approaching a tipping point that libraries/institutions—even in hi gh-income countries—can no longer bear. In these circumstances, the open access (OA) m ovement has been promoted over the past 15 years, and new types of publications have ap peared. This paper discusses the definition and history of OA, the position of each stake- holder in the OA landscape, and new digital-age journals, which include OA mega-journals and research funders’ OA platforms.

Keywords: Scholarly Communication, Open Access, OA Mega-journals, OA Publishing Platforms

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