The ever-shifting academic (or scholarly) publishing landscape is amidst a period of great uncertainty. Previously, most publishers signed “The Big Deal” with institutions and societies, granting them access to numerous journals’ content for a yearly fixed price. Then, a new model began to take over academic publishing: Open Access (OA).
So, what is Open Access? How did it replace “The Big Deal”? And what does this mean for publishers? Let’s dive right into it!
The Fall of "The Big Deal"
Before discussing Open Access, let’s first start with some historical background for the distribution model it succeeded.
In the 1990s and 2000s, the academic publishing landscape was undergoing a digital shift, increasingly making articles accessible online. Institutions and societies no longer needed to buy and store physical copies on site, and it was easier to access journals than ever before. As a result, a new type of partnership between institutions, societies and publishers emerged – “The Big Deal”. Institutions and societies would make Big Deals with publishers, who would grant them digital access to hundreds (or thousands) of journals in exchange for a yearly subscription fee.
The Big Deal had both positive and negative effects on the academic publishing landscape – on one hand, it allowed institutions access to numerous journals that they wouldn’t have purchased before. However, the negatives were just as significant: Big Deal costs were unattractive to institutions and societies during an industry-wide trend of flatlining budgets, and as publishers rushed to be included in Big Deals, they consolidated the market and effectively raised prices for purchasing institutions.
The Rise of Open Access
As the digital shift in academic publishing continued, a new model arose to challenge The Big Deal’s supremacy in the industry. In the 2000s and 2010s, Open Access emerged as an increasingly popular model for publishing scholarly journals. There are various types of Open Access – gold, hybrid, and diamond, to name a few – but Open Access generally functions as its name implies: journals are made available for individual consumption at low or no cost to the reader.
Beyond Open Access being more consumer friendly than The Big Deal, there were several other factors that led to its rise and The Big Deal’s subsequent decline. In the 2000s, new tools emerged to help libraries and societies evaluate the journals they received in Big Deals and determine whether they were getting their money’s worth. Guidance and policies to make Open Access articles even more openly accessible were released in several industry-leading countries. And digital piracy played a role too: legally questionable sites like Sci-Hub quickly gained popularity as a new method to access academic journals for “free”.
Because of these developments, many institutions and societies were less enthusiastic about signing Big Deals. Open Access made journals more accessible and affordable, so paying comparatively huge yearly subscription fees for access became much less appealing.
Nowadays, Open Access is regarded as one of the most popular models for academic publishing. Although this has generally been good for consumers of academic journals, Open Access has also led to a mixed bag of consequences for manuscript authors and journal publishers alike.
How Open Access Impacts Scholarly Publishing
The rise of Open Access has impacted Scholarly Publishing in numerous ways, but generally, publishers have and will continue to experiment with new ways to generate revenue without relying on Big Deals. Some notable developments from this modern era are:
Transformative Agreements
The rise of Open Access has resulted in many institutions signing Transformative Agreements – a kind of middle ground agreement between the old Big Deal model and Open Access.
Under these agreements, Big Deal-like access payments and Open Access Article Processing Charges (APCs) paid by the institution for publishing authors are bundled under a single contract. Over a multi-year term, the proportional amount allocated to Open Access APCs typically grows, while read access payments shrink (or disappear entirely once a certain threshold is met). This allows publishers to maintain some consistency in their revenue while allowing purchasing institutions to transition further towards Open Access.
For Revenue Growth, Publishing Volume is King
One of the biggest impacts of Open Access is the industry-wide shift to prioritize publishing volume for revenue growth. Previously, publishers could rely on Big Deals to provide significant and consistent yearly revenue. This is less of an option nowadays, so publishers have shifted to APCs as a way to replace lost revenue.
Authors must pay APCs to have their manuscripts edited, peer-reviewed, and published upon successful vetting. And since a publisher’s APC-based revenue is proportional to the number of APCs they receive, they naturally want to maximize APCs (and publishing volume). One example of success under this revenue model is the multidisciplinary megajournal PLOS ONE, which published (and claimed APCs for) over 31,500 articles in their peak year.
On the other hand, some publishers have greedily chased APC revenue to their own detriment, like Hindawi, which retracted over 8,000 open access articles in 2023 that lacked scientific quality. Hindawi is now regarded as a disreputable paper mill and represents a flaw within the Open Access model - without Big Deals, some publishers are willing to risk their reputation to generate revenue.
The B2C Publisher-Author Relationship
In the Open Access era, manuscript authors have essentially become customers who shop for the right publisher. When choosing a publisher, an author might consider factors like the publication’s reputation, APC cost, and time it takes to get published. The author experience (AX) matters, and publishers must compete with each other to attract and retain authors.
Consequently, publishers who are reputable, fast, and easy to work with have risen to the top of the industry. For example, OA-based publisher MDPI’s success can be attributed to their numerous in-house staff responsible for duties otherwise taken on by independent journal editors and editorial offices. They can turn around manuscripts quickly and consistently, attracting authors to publish under their brand.
As Open Access continues to grow in popularity, publishers will increasingly have to compete with each other to attract authors, and author experience will play a significant role in determining which publishers succeed.
Conclusion
The developments in the academic publishing industry due to the emergence of Open Access show that the academic / scholarly journal market is becoming increasingly fragmented. Without the Big Deal, publishers must find alternative ways to generate revenue. Requirements for OA level, APC amounts, and adherence to institutional preferences or government regulations can vary from publisher to publisher, and authors have the freedom to pick and choose the publisher they submit APCs to. In this transformative period, Open Access will continue to grow in popularity, its definition will continue to change as new guidance or regulations are released, and it's up to publishers to enact dynamic strategies that will allow their businesses to adapt.