The Brief

Pearson+ turns the textbook into a subscription. But how do the economics work and is something similar viable in scholarly publishing? Also, UKRI’s OA policy is released, PeerJ pivots, a many tentacled Octopus seeks to disrupt scholarly publishing, and “tortured phrases” are appearing in the scholarly literature signaling the use of (not very good) automated translation software.

You might think that after 130 studies on the subject, we’d have a clear picture of the effect that OA publishing on an article’s citation performance. Alas, the picture is far from clear. In addition to probing OA citation advantage (OACA) we discuss the likelihood that Plan S “transformative journals” will meet targets, the impact of cancelling Big Deals on researchers, the impact of transformative agreements on societies, and more.

Clarivate’s acquisition of ProQuest in front and center in this issue. We also discuss PLOS’s latest business model, Clarivate’s new metrics, abuse of CC-BY licenses, 15th Century manuscript production, and more.

Subscribe to Open (S2O) is an emerging OA model that is attracting attention — but for authors with funder mandates submitting to a S2O may create a “Schrödinger’s cat” situation. Plus: PLOS’s new journals, CAS’s journal watch list, RIP Microsoft Academic Search, the STM Article Sharing Framework, and more.

We talk a lot about the “Buckets of Money” problem at C&E. It is frequently said that there is enough money “in the system” to transition globally to open access (OA).The problem is that the money is in the wrong buckets. In this issue we explore the landmark Elsevier-University of California “transformative deal” and how UC has attempted to solve the buckets of money problem. We also discuss the Plan S Right Retention Strategy, Google Scholar’s new “public access” feature, and other topics.

An important albeit rarely invoked maxim is that if someone offers you a 7-times multiple of revenue for your publishing company, you take the deal. The more salient question is, Why would Wiley pay $298 million for a $40 million journal publisher with no recurring revenues? In this issue we explore the Wiley-Hindawi deal, the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy, a take over of a journal by “rogue editors,” the rise of newsletter services, and other topics.