1. The Road Ahead: Forward, But In What Direction? Michael Jubb Director, Research Information Network Academic Publishing in Europe ConferenceBerlin 21 January 2009

2.

If you cry Forward, you must without fail make plain in what direction to go

• Anton Chekhov

3. Whose perspective? some key stakeholders

Researchers as creators, disseminators and users

Research funders

• Public, charitable and commercial sectors

• National policy-making bodies

Research institutions

Publishers (and secondary publishers)

ICT service providers

Libraries and publicly-funded service providers

Commercial information service providers

4. The big picture: overall costs of the current system 5. Some propositions

The volume of research undertaken worldwide has increased, is increasing, and will continue to increase

• and more of it will be done collaboratively

Researchers are both producers and consumers of research outputs

• but they dont necessarily share the same interests

Governments invest in research because they believe it has a positive impact on society and the economy

• and they want to maximise that impact

The costs of research, and of higher education, have increased, are increasing, and ought to be diminished

• and cost-effectiveness will become an increasingly-dominant theme

6. Challenges for the future skills services content sustainability locus of provision user expectations and needs 7. Content: user expectations and needs

published and non-published

• grey literature, reports, working papers

• data: raw or refined? mine or yours?

• websites, blogs, wikis, emails

quality-assured and non-quality-assured?

• the good-enough source and/or version?

• pre or post-publication peer review?

digital and non-digital

• perdurance of the book?

• role of digitisation

8. Content: locus of provision

changing roles of

• researchers and research institutions

• • personal websites, repositories etc

• publishers and aggregators

• • direct relationship with authors and readers

• • who aggregates?

• libraries

• • from ownership to licensing

• • consortia as aggregators?

9. Content: costs and sustainability

• continued growth in the volumes of research

• constrained university budgets

• sustainability of the publishing business under challenges of

• • green OA

• • gold OA

10. Services: user expectations and needs

researchers as creators

• quality assurance and enhancement

• distribution and marketing

researchers and others as consumers

• quality assurance

• search and navigation services

• access, 24x7 and permanent

• links and interoperability

• text mining (published text as data)

funders and research institutions

• assessment and evaluation services

11. Services: locus of provision

publishing services

• still needed?

• competition from other providers

search, navigation, access & preservation

• overlapping roles of

• • search engines

• • individual libraries and consortia

• • individual publishers, aggregators etc

12. Services: sustainability

search, navigation and access

• invigorating competition or wasteful duplication?

• levels of usage of services provided by publishers and libraries

sustainability/preservation of digital content

• roles of publishers and libraries

• grey literature, websites, blogs, wikis, emails.

increasing interest in assessment and evaluation services

• RAE/REF in the UK; ERA in Australia

13. Skills, expertise and competences:user expectations and needs

specialist research skills and specialist information skills

whats easy, and whats not

• and how that changes

the dangers of the information literacy approach

enhanced needs in some areas

• eg business, management and communication skills; bibliometrics

14. Skills, expertise and competences: locus of provision

differences of view as between researchers, librarians and publishers

changes in views over time

de-skilling, up-skilling and complementarity

15. Skills, expertise and competences: sustainability

continuing need for skills development for both researchers and information specialists

• generic and specialist skills

• complementarity

• engagement and communication

16. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly

1. Users(creators and consumers)

• they are (or should be) the drivers

• but we are only beginning to understand how they use information resources and services

• they dont understand the digital information environment; but they want content and services that

• • are quick and simple to use

• • are as comprehensive and interoperable as possible

• • provide for both quality-assured and non-quality-assured content

• theres an increasing demand for assessment and evaluation services

17. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly

2. Providers

• growth in concentration of resources and services

• growth in overlaps (and competition?) between differenttypesof provider

• • researchers and research institutions

• • libraries and library consortia

• • publishers and aggregators

• • search and navigation services

• complementarity and skill sets

18. Some conclusions:seeing through a glass darkly

3. Sustainability

• constraints on university funding

• but research volumes continue to increase

• growing interest in theoverallcosts of the scholarly communications process, and in the (cost-) efficiency of the research process as a whole

• growth in support from Governments and funding agencies for gold OA policies;and from universities and research institutions for green OA

• growing concerns about the pace and the costs of transition

19. Thank you Michael Jubb www.rin.ac.uk Activities, Costs and Income Flows in Scholarly Communications :http://www.rin.ac.uk/costs-funding-flows Mind the skills gap: Information-handling training for researchers:http://www.rin.ac.uk/training-research-info To share or not to share: Publication and quality assurance of research data outputs :http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-publication Researchers' use of academic libraries and their services :http://www.rin.ac.uk/researchers-use-libraries