OPEN IT

The OPENIT project aims to analyze various aspects of the scientific publishing market and to understand the complex intricacies that characterize it. It seeks to grasp the interactions among its different stakeholders, such as dissemination platforms, research institutions, government agencies, publishers, and the scientific community. Structured into 5 work packages – WP (see the figure below), the project charts the evolution towards more open and equitable models. The first WP provides a comprehensive overview of policies promoting open access, such as Plan S, Horizon Europe, H2020, and CoARA (which focuses on open science in research evaluation), as well as their articulation with numerous initiatives from the scientific community like OPERAS and DIAMAS. The objective is to provide an overview of existing initiatives and analyze their interactions and potential overlaps. This initial WP is followed by a study characterizing existing open access publishing models, distinguishing those community-driven, institution-driven (PCI, Plan U, Diamond), and those based on agreements between institutions and publishers (S2O, Deal agreements, TA, etc.). The aim is to expose the characteristics of these models and conduct SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) and PESTEL (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental, Legal) analyses. Subsequently, the project (WP3) analyzes the case of journals that have adopted the open access policies from the first WP and migrated to one of the models described in the second WP. The goal is to learn from these experiences to potentially propose adjustments to the models to address the challenges these journals may face, especially those that chose to revert to closed access after being open. WP4 proposes a holistic approach, viewing the scientific publishing market as a set of actors with divergent interests but who have an interest, at the same time, in converging for various reasons. It addresses this issue from the perspective of game theory to determine a long-term equilibrium considering these factors. Finally, WP5 is dedicated to project management and results dissemination, including organizing an international seminar on the scientific publishing market, its future, and its challenges.