What do the flows of money, resources, and influence look like in the scholarly publishing system? Even researchers whose careers depend on publishing success may not be aware of all the elements that keep the system running, and each element is managed by people with their own stake in how it functions now and their own ideas about how it ought to function. This creates a complex web of perspectives and incentives that we must understand if we want to effectively change the system.
The interactive stakeholder map was created as a tool to aid understanding of stakeholder incentives in the scholarly publishing system. With better awareness of the important influences between stakeholders, we can make better decisions about where to focus our efforts on advocacy and reform, whether that be by targeting the immense flows of money involved in subscription costs paid by libraries, or the unglamorous, often underfunded behind-the-scenes publishing infrastructure.
In addition to a purely descriptive function, the interactive map is also meant to serve as a scaffold on which expert stakeholders can give detailed comments about certain relationships they consider impactful. A survey is currently underway to assess what obstacles are perceived by different stakeholder groups, and where they think they have the greatest ability to effect change. Additional details on this survey are available on the Free Our Knowledge website.
By Laurens Kemp, PhD, Clinical Psychology, Maastricht University