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Phillips, Angus

doi: 10.1163/18784712-03104027pmid: N/A

Inchcoombe, Steven; Winter, Susie; Lucraft, Mithu; Baker, Katie

doi: 10.1163/18784712-03104023pmid: N/A

AbstractSpringer Nature (as Springer) signed its first transformative read and publish agreement in 2015. This Springer compact agreement with VSNU (Association of Universities in the Netherlands) was the first agreement of its kind to combine reading and publishing fees with the aim of transitioning traditional library subscription payments into central funding to support open access (OA) publishing. It has proved to be a pivotal moment in the transition to OA.Since then, Springer Nature has agreed many such national agreements all around the world, including the world’s largest with Projekt DEAL in Germany. Through a series of case studies, this article will examine the role these agreements have played in facilitating the transition to OA – to bring centralized funding for OA – and analyse how their nature and characteristics have evolved and adapted to reflect the differing needs of individual customers, as well as changing views.The paper will also consider the challenges faced by publishers, institutions, and funders in agreeing transformative agreements, consider how these ‘blockers’ can be overcome, and evaluate the future role of transformative agreements as a critical precursor to achieving open science.

Hill, Mandy

doi: 10.1163/18784712-03104024pmid: N/A

AbstractLike the majority of established publishers, Cambridge University Press (CUP) is in the middle of a major transformation, shifting from pay-to-read to pay-to-publish models; and it has embraced transformative agreements (TA s) as a key lever to support this journey. Importantly, they are seen as a key stepping stone, not a destination or the only route, to full open access (OA). Implementing TA s has required huge change internally and necessitated a new kind of collaboration with librarians. As a publisher with a strong emphasis on humanities and social sciences publishing, CUP sees TA s as providing a route to OA for all of its journals and as ensuring no subject area is disadvantaged by the transformation. The shift to OA does come with challenges; a key one is author equity and how to ensure that in eliminating the financial barriers to read content, no new barriers to publication are created.

Noël, Sophie

doi: 10.1163/18784712-03104025pmid: N/A

AbstractAlthough protected by the law on fixed prices for books, independent bookshops in France have struggled to maintain their market share against bookselling giants such as Amazon and the chains. In trying to do so, they have developed a rhetoric based on the singularity of the experience in physical shops, stressing a sense of intimacy akin to that associated with the domestic sphere. Their being independent – no matter how slippery the notion – has also been a key argument. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic goods, this paper aims to show that this strategy has been effective in singling out something that ‘only’ independent retail can provide, something that proves particularly attractive to certain categories of customers. The article draws on semi-structured interviews carried out with owners of small and medium-sized independent bookshops, together with observation during events and debates, to provide some insight into a key element of physical bookshops’ resilience.

Shaw, Sarah

doi: 10.1163/18784712-03104026pmid: N/A

AbstractEmotional labour has been widely recognized in a variety of industries, but not yet in publishing. By examining 126 survey responses from current or former publishing employees, this study identifies the primary forms of emotional labour present in the publishing industry, and how these vary between employees. Also examined is the extent to which industry leaders recognize the emotional labour performed by employees, and the impact that this emotional labour has on the latter. The survey responses demonstrate a high prevalence of emotional labour in the publishing industry and that this work is largely unrecognized and sometimes entirely dismissed. Emotional labour also has a generally negative impact on employees, particularly working-class and black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME) employees, which contributes to low diversity in the industry. I conclude with recommendations for further research and for industry change to reduce emotional labour, improve employee welfare, and facilitate increased retention of working-class and BAME employees.