In questo preprint di Johnson and Malcolmson gli autori analizzano la evoluzione della pubblicazione scientifica da parte delle società scientifiche britanniche in un arco temporale che va dal 2015 al 2023.

Per vari motivi il passaggio ad un modello di pubblicazione open access per molte società scientifiche ha rappresentato un problema (di sostenibilità), che però l’affidamento in outsourcing ad editori commerciali non sembra aver risolto, infatti le entrate sono diminuite in questo periodo.

Appaiono interessanti le conclusioni della analisi:

Finally, our findings should provide encouragement to society publishers that outsourcing to a large commercial publisher is not the only viable strategy and may even lead to worse outcomes than remaining independent. Societies are now able to access a much wider range of potential publishing partners, collaborators and service providers than they were a decade ago, including other societies and university presses whose missions and values are more likely to align with their own. Yet leveraging these opportunities is likely to require an investment of management time and financial resources that will not be feasible or even desirable for all societies. Where publishing is a marginal part of a society’s activities, the logical approach may still be to divest what is an increasingly complex operation offering uncertain future returns. But for those societies with the means and the will to publish journals in their own right, his study provides compelling evidence for retaining, or even reclaiming, their independence.