FEATURE Event report anagement Share and share alike?
The conference was held at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften
At the 11th International APE Conference, a prestigious industry panel discussed whether the academic sharing economy adds value to the scholarly ecosystem. Tim Gillett reports
S
haring is the new buying, proclaimed Richard Padley in an early morning discussion at APE 2016 in Berlin.
The Semantico chairman,
leading a panel talk on the rise of Scholarly Communication Networks (SCNs), suggested that many recent examples of successful business models were based on ‘disruptive innovation’ – citing Amazon, Uber and AirBnB as examples of enterprises that succeeded despite, or because of, the
14 Research Information APRIL/MAY 2016
fact that they ignored traditional business wisdom.
SCNs such as ResearchGate,
Academia.edu and Mendeley have formed part of the scholarly publishing scene for some time, based on the principles of sharing results, articles and data, encouraging discussion and information-exchange – and, some would say, fostering a ‘vanity factor’ for researchers keen for exposure.
Padley cited figures that suggested some 15 million articles have been uploaded to SCNs, with around 40 million members registered – and, though admitted that the figures needed to be ‘taken with a pinch of salt’, said that the importance of such networks was certainly growing fast. Padley asked the assembled panel – comprising Fred Dylla, executive director emeritus of the American Institute of Physics, Charlie Rapple from Kudos, Grace Baynes from Springer Nature, Kent Anderson of Caldera Publishing Solutions, and Hannfried von Hindenburg of Elsevier – whether they thought SCNs added or removed value from the scholarly community, and whether the publishing industry as a whole has ‘missed a trick’ by underestimating the potential of SCNs.
Dylla outlined how he had been asked by STM to chair a working group to discuss the topic, pointing out that while SCNs’ rise to prominence has been relatively recent, that some of them have been in existence for a quarter of a century. Publishers are concerned that this new way of sharing subscription content is a threat to their business models – and, ultimately, their sustainability.
Following consultation, the group published a set of voluntary principles and asked organisations – including SCNs and
‘We need to understand that publishing is only a small part of the process for researchers’
publishers – to sign up to them. Members of the audience and the wider community were urged to read the principles – and comment – at
www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/ scn-consultation-2015.
Baynes admitted that publishers had ‘missed a trick’, pointing out that SCNs were now meeting two ‘unmet needs’
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Vera Münch
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