Background
Following the report ‘Knowledge Exchange Approach to Open Scholarship' and in line with the recommendations resulting from the workshop report Moving from Ambition to Reality, Knowledge Exchange developed a framework to articulate the changes occurring in scholarly communications: The Knowledge Exchange Open Scholarship Framework.
On the basis of this framework, we identified further work to understand the Economy of Open Scholarship as a priority and have worked on two interconnected activities dedicated to the Economy of Open Scholarship; one practical - Insights into the Economy of Open Scholarship and one conceptual - Open Scholarship and the need for Collective Action.
Purpose of the book
As many of the challenges in navigating the transition to Open Scholarship are economic, the focus of the book is on the economic arena. In addition, great attention is given to the incentives, actions and influences of meso-level actors: groups, communities or organisations such as universities, disciplines, scholarly societies or publishers because of their enormous impact on developing open scholarship. The authors analyse how economic models can be applied to scholarship and conclude that economic theory cannot fully explain nor prescribe how Open Scholarship can be achieved. The challenges to achieve Open Scholarship, such as gravitational hubs and the complex governance of common pool resources, are highlighted.
The overall conclusion of the book is that for a successful transition to Open Scholarship, collective action approaches and establishment of a supportive infrastructure are key.
Next steps
We hope that this book has inspired thought and further discussion. Knowledge Exchange initiated further explorative activities. The workshop 'The KE Open Scholarship Framework and the Need for Collective Action' at FORCE 2019, took place in Edinburgh in October 2019.
KE also established an Open Science expert group to identify and scope further activities to focus on technological and social, as well as economic aspects of Open Scholarship.
