Counting the Holes in the Swiss Cheese: “Read and Publish” Discovers America
June 20, 2018 | By Joseph Esposito
Whether a transformative agreement (where toll-access publications are “transformed” into Open Access documents) is structured as “read-and-publish” or “publish-and-read,” one implication in common is these agreements are likely to lead to cancellations of subscription-based journals at smaller institutions--or failing cancellation, downward pressure on pricing. The reason for this is that these agreements make a vast quantity of publication OA, disincentivizing smaller institutions to continue to pay for them. “Read-and-Publish,” in other words, creates uneconomic “holes” in a publisher’s distribution strategy.
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