As one
of our
commenters recently asked, what would have happened “if a big
commercial publisher had pioneered the high-volume, low-bar, author-pays
mega-journal”? If PLoS ONE was instead Big Company
ONE, would it have succeeded and been as adored as it is now by OA
advocates, or would it have been seen as a “cynical exploitation of the
publish-or-perish climate in academia?” Would publishing
traditionalists see it as an exciting new market to serve rather than
the end of quality?
From
The
Scholarly Kitchen.
A deeply good point, and one worth contemplating.
I tend to think that if it were Big Company One, that it would neither
have been received very well, nor worked as well as it has.
PLOS is a brand built on abundance, not scarcity, with a good
association with impact thanks to its loss leader print journals. PLOS
One is a natural product for that kind of brand, not to mention a
natural one for its audience (the transitions I talked about last week
are at best unevenly distributed - there’s a lot of religious fervor
left out there). It also had the benefit of good timing and great
technical implementation, and good staff. All of those things go into
making a new venture a success.
Don’t forget that YouTube worked not just because of the team and
founders, but the timing. Flash hit maturity. Broadband penetration went
mainstream. Video got inserted into everything that had a camera.
Imagine being the last video sharing platform to die before that trio of
confluences lined up, and watching YouTube skyrocket to the heavens from
the ground. Depressing.
But if your brand is built on exclusivity and scarcity, it’s going to
be much harder to execute the PLoS One model. You won’t have the
faithful lined up, because they’re burned by years of being attacked by
you (thus the perception of cynicism is probable). And you won’t have a
team that understands abundance, that designs for it. And you’ll likely
have a management structure that will be looking at it with skepticism,
not with hope.