SRHE Newsletter

Published by: SRHE Inhouse publication Frequency: Four issues per year SRHE Members - Free to members

Out Now - SRHE News Issue 10 - October 2012

Extract from SRHE News 10 Editorial

‘Open access’ publishing: is gold overpriced?

Although higher education worldwide is struggling with rising costs and falling budgets, it also continues to grow at a rapid rate. In one sense HE has never been stronger, but the dislocations caused by recession in the West have also exposed the weaknesses in the status quo. In a similar way SRHE faces possible future weaknesses from a current position of almost unprecedented strength..

In publishing, the implications of ‘gold’ open access remain ambiguous, not least because of the likelihood of different approaches in different parts of the world.

If in (parts of) the West academic publication becomes more dependent on author-pays approaches, will this liberate scholarship, or might it in practice increase the power of research sponsors (providing block grants to institutions for author-pays publication) and/or institutions (providing those author payments) over their academic staff?...