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for funders too. That poses a particular challenge when there are severe constraints on public expenditure.
8.5. We are also conscious that the interests of different groups of stakeholders and players in the research communications landscape do not necessarily coincide.
- i. Researchers are interested in speedy and effective publication and dissemination of research publications. As authors they are interested in securing publication in high-status journals which maximise their chances of securing high impact and credit for the work they have done, and their chances of winning the next research grant. As readers and users they are interested in speedy access, free at the point of use; ease of navigation; and the ability to use, and re-use, content with as few restrictions as possible.
- ii. Universities and other research institutions are interested in maximising their research income and performance, while bearing down on expenditure. The larger research-intensive universities already enjoy (and pay for) access to the majority of the journals relevant to their work; but they could face additional costs as a result of a shift to author-side payments. Less research-intensive universities could see reductions in costs as a result of such a shift.
- iii. Research funders are interested in securing the maximum impact from high-quality research, and thus in ensuring that publications arising from work that they fund are widely accessible—across the global research community as well as all other communities that may have an interest in the results—with as few restrictions as possible. Like universities, they are also interested in bearing down on costs.
- iv. Libraries—in the HE sector in particular—are interested in maximising the number of journals and other research publications they can provide for their readers, at the lowest possible cost. Librarians have been in the vanguard in seeking to limit increases in the costs of journals, and in promoting the development of repositories. They are also developing their roles in providing new services to researchers in an information environment that has changed fundamentally in the last decade.
- v. Publishers come in many different guises: those that publish thousands of titles and those that publish one; the commercial and the non-commercial; university presses and learned societies; and open access and subscriptionbased, with many operating both models. All are interested in sustaining and developing services for the effective publication and dissemination of research publications that are underpinned by peer review. Subscription-based and open access publishers operate different business models; but both are interested in securing the revenues that enable them to offer high-quality services to authors and to readers/users. For subscription-based publishers, developments such as repositories—particularly if embargo periods and other restrictions on use and re-use rights are reduced—pose risks that cause
