[written by Brigitte Shull]
Next week I will return to Springer Nature, joining the OA team. It isn’t goodbye to Gold Leaf though, I’m hopeful that there will be more opportunities for me to collaborate with Linda and Annika Bennett again. I’ve done so for the past 13 years, first as a client at Cambridge University Press working on the Library Advisory Boards and then as a colleague.
In my time at Gold Leaf, I’ve been lucky enough to have a range of interesting projects and clients. Unsurprisingly, there has been an OA slant to much of my work, including the facilitation of an institutional library advisory board for the American Physical Society, supporting strategic initiatives such as a new Open Access model and Artificial Intelligence (AI) policy; a stakeholder research project for The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to identify opportunities to improve metadata collection; and institutional engagement regarding the new Open Access books model, Opening the Future, for Central European University Press. While I’ve been reflecting on the interesting projects I’ve had the privilege of working on, Linda asked me my thoughts on what I see coming in the OA landscape. I put together a few notes to share here, it won’t be a surprise necessarily but hopefully is a useful summary. I see several significant shifts coming that may be of interest to the Gold Leaf network:
1. Focus on value beyond access
As OA becomes more embedded, institutions will need to evaluate agreements on factors beyond just access and publishing rights. Factors like impact, manuscript handling speed, author experience, discoverability and impact services, data and analytics, and integration with institutional systems will likely play a larger role. My personal view is that there needs to be a more thoughtful examination of the value drivers on both sides* and commercial models need to reflect and capture this expanded value proposition.
Price alone — especially APC-based pricing — shouldn’t define the value proposition.; publishers need to demonstrate superior publishing experience, faster turnaround times, and better author services to justify commercial models. Services for delivery of content, user experience, and interoperability are part of publishers’ costs and could/should enter the value proposition more directly. As I’ve written about here, I feel strongly that driving impact and impact services should be a bigger part of the publisher value proposition.
2. Role of subscriptions and/or subscription revenues
As more content becomes OA, the “read” component becomes less valuable, especially for institutions with strong OA mandates. It is likely that agreements will increasingly be focused on publishing rights with minimal or no reading fees. The challenge will then be managing this transition for publishers whose business models still depend substantially on subscription revenue. There is of course a big question mark around the role of hybrid journals. They’ve been under pressure from funders and some institutional customers but none of the other approaches have really eclipsed hybrid journal’s ability to offer both a path to open and author access/equity for unfunded authors at the same time…
3. Move away from historical spend as baseline (?)
The current models often use historical subscription spend as a baseline, which can perpetuate inequities. This isn’t straightforward at all, but we’ll likely see a move toward more transparent, output-based pricing that better reflects actual publishing costs and institutional research intensity. This could be in the form of more dynamic pricing models that adjust based on article volume, discipline mix, and institutional characteristics or it may only work for certain types of institutional customers, only time will tell.
4. Funder mandates will continue to be important, but publishers need an independent strategy
With Plan S in Europe, the NIH public access policy expansion in the US, and similar mandates globally, institutions face increasing pressure to ensure immediate OA compliance. This will drive demand for agreements that guarantee compliance, potentially with enhanced services like automated deposit to repositories or compliance tracking dashboards. That being said, the past year has demonstrated that funder mandates, especially those tied to government policy, are unpredictable. Publishers need a flexible strategy that works across multiple scenarios (meaning all eggs can’t be in one basket!).
5. Strategic importance of the US market
North America represents the largest concentration of research funding and output globally; the US alone produces over 25% of the world’s research articles. But what makes this market uniquely important right now is the policy environment shift we’re witnessing. The NIH’s strengthened public access policy, requiring immediate open access for NIH-funded research starting in 2025, is likely a watershed moment. NIH represents over $47 billion in annual research funding—the single largest research funder globally. This policy change affects thousands of institutions and fundamentally changes the value equation for OA agreements. What’s particularly significant is the consultation on APC caps. If the caps are put in place, it could create a new urgency for institutional OA agreements, pressure traditional pricing models, and generate yet another set of compliance infrastructure needs.
6. Continued complexity
We may be longing for more simplicity and maybe the need for operational efficiency means that we’ll get a little bit of standardization in contract language or reporting requirements. However, different markets have different dynamics—what works for European consortia may not fit the decentralized US market. Our landscape seems to be getting more complicated, rather than less.
What Could This Mean:
For publishers, some very broad suggestions are:
- Build flexibility into product parameters to accommodate rapid market evolution
- Develop clear transition pathways from current models to whatever future-state each individual publishing company determines is right for your customer base & key stakeholders/business model/brand
- Create frameworks that work across diverse institutional types and global markets
- ·Invest in services and infrastructure that differentiate beyond just content access
- Publishers who keep integrating compliance workflows directly into OA agreements will have advantage.
- Maintain strong relationships and open dialogue with institutions to co-create models that work for both sides
The OA landscape is shifting faster than agreements, business models, and workflows can comfortably keep pace with — and that tension is unlikely to resolve neatly in the near term. What strikes me most, having worked from within publishers and then as a consultant with a range of organizations within scholarly communications, is that collaboration and consultation produce the best results. I’m grateful for my time at Gold Leaf and am looking forward to continuing these conversations from my new vantage point at Springer Nature.
It has been a huge privilege to work with Brigitte over the past 3 years. We wish her every success in her new role and much look forward to keeping in touch with her. Thank you, Brigitte!
Gold Leaf 