The Future of Scientific Publishing

As new models for disseminate scientific information emerge, new models for protecting scientific publications are developing. SIPPI has undertaken the following projects on this topic:

Survey of Scholarly Publishers
Meeting on the Future of Scientific Publishing

Survey of Scholarly Publishers

SIPPI is investigating different open access publishing models with another survey project.  In cooperation with HighWire Press and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), SIPPI will gather data on journals that are:  (1) entirely open access, providing all content for free immediately upon publication, (2) delayed open access, giving all content away for free, eventually, and (3) hybrid open access, releasing some content for free, at some time.  Results of the survey will provide detailed information on business models across a range of publication ventures, and help determine whether, and how, these models are helping to achieve the goals of different publishers.

A report on the survey's findings will be released in winter 2005.

• Preliminary Results were presented by Cara Kaufman in November 2004, at a meeting co-sponsored by SIPPI, and jointly organized by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers and the Society for Scholarly Publishing.



• More presentations from the meeting, "Open Access Publishing: Does it really work in practice?" are available online, along with an agenda.

Meeting on the Future of Scientific Publishing

In winter 2005, SIPPI, in collaboration with the Association of American Universities (AAU), plans to convene a meeting of university administrators, research librarians, academic societies, commercial and noncommercial publishers, and researchers.  The goals of this meeting will be to flesh out the fundamental issues on which the future of scientific publishing will rest, to promote a sophisticated dialogue on plausible scenarios for alternative views of what such publishing might look like, and to inform that dialogue with up-to-date empirical findings from a survey of publishers.  SIPPI and AAU will produce a report with a set of recommendations for future work and priorities resulting from this meeting.