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Philosophically, Open Education is concerned with making access to education universal and free, thereby eliminating many barriers of privilege. Open Educational Resources are a part of that. These are, according to the strictest definition of the word, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and modify. Open Access is a part of it as well, and is concerned specifically with removing barriers to accessing published scholarship. Thus, to work in Open Education, especially in the US, one must have at least a basic understanding of the ecosystem of academic and scholarly publishing. This includes types of publishers, types of sources, how the for-profit world of textbook and scholarly publishing interacts with schools, universities, and libraries.
While the purist definition of OER calls for resources to be licensed for reuse and revision, practically, sources can aid in an OER initiative simply by being freely available. From the perspective of a student who is benefiting from the adoption of freely accessible materials in lieu of a traditional textbook, there is little tangible difference in the licensing of the materials themselves.
From the instructor’s perspective, openly licensed materials offer many benefits over freely accessible but non-openly licensed materials. One, they are free to share, meaning instructors are not simply limited to providing a link. Two, the version that is openly licensed is open in perpetuity, so an instructor never has to worry about a freely available article or chapter disappearing behind a paywall. And three, they’re often licensed as permitting revision and remixing, giving the instructor much greater freedom when it comes to course design.
As such, openly licensed materials should be preferred when choosing materials, but freely accessible, all—rights-reserved materials can also be a valuable component of a campus affordability initiative. We’ll get into licensing in much more detail later in the microcredential, so don’t worry if you don’t yet understand the implications of all the terms you just read.
The Ecosystem of Publishing
Scholarly publishing is a broad term that describes the range of activities related to the publication of academic research. For the purposes of this module, we define scholarly publishing as a system, or series of interactions, through which academic writing or research is disseminated and consumed within scholarly communities. While there are many types of materials that may be utilized in a college classroom, and while journal publishing is a massively important component of the industry, OER is most commonly concerned with scholarly monographs, in particular academic textbooks. OA, the sibling movement to OER, is more concerned with journal articles.
The ecosystem of academic publishing has six main actors: publishers, aggregators, libraries, educational institutions (K-12, university faculty, university bookstores, authors, and readers). The following section describes the role that each group plays in the scholarly publishing ecosystem, and traces their interactions with the other actors. It is critical to remember that the interactions between actors are not linear, with content simply flowing from publisher through aggregator to library and finally to the reader. Rather, the reader in a research context is also a creator, feeding input back to publishers. The consumption of content flows directly into the creation of more content, which is published and distributed to other readers. This cycle is modeled in the following figure.
Actors in the Ecosystem
Publishers
Publishers work to make public scholarly work in the form of textbooks, journals, and monographs, and represent a wide range of publishing approaches, business models, budgets, and institutional affiliations. The three most significant groups in academic publishing are commercial (for-profit) academic publishers, professional associations (primarily for journal publishing) and university presses (for monographs). These three groups publish the vast majority of journal articles and monographs in circulation, although recently, smaller open access publishers have also begun to emerge.
The role of publishers includes (among other things):
- acquisitions and list curation
- editorial work and coordinating peer review
- design and production (for various formats, typically: print, digital PDF, and EPUB)
- distribution and marketing of finished products into various channels (libraries, aggregators, stores) where readers can access books
The last of these—distribution—involves direct relationships between publishers and either distributors/aggregators or libraries, which is typically a commercial relationship. Most publishers of monographs now provide digital files (PDF and EPUB) into academic libraries.
The overarching problem for publishers of monographs is one of revenues. In general, publishers report that revenues for scholarly monograph titles are on a downward slope. It’s important to note that publishers tend to be two stations removed from the readers, since content/digital files usually go from publishers to aggregators for distribution, and then from aggregators into libraries, who in turn serve the readers. This means that structurally, publishers have little interaction with readers.
However, as publishers acquire content from the same people who consume their published works, there is a separate relationship between the two, which we will revisit in the Readers and Authors section.
Aggregators/Distributors
While publishers create the marketable product (academic journals, textbooks and monographs), distributors (known as aggregators in the context of digital distribution) are typically responsible for getting these products to the places where readers access them: libraries and retailers. This module focuses on academic and library consumption. People are often surprised to learn that around 80% of library collection budgets are now spent on purchasing subscription access to digital publications.
The aggregator role involves:
- acquiring ebooks (digital files + metadata) from publishers
- delivery of books (both digital and print) and associated metadata to libraries
- managing commercial relationships with and between libraries and publishers
- building tools to improve discoverability of books
- (sometimes) providing reading platforms for digital books to library patrons
Most commercial aggregators (ProQuest, EBSCO, and Overdrive) provide complementary digital reading platforms to libraries. However, these are closed-silo systems, which do not allow other tools or systems to build on them. These closed systems can frequently cause frustration in users, as different systems must be employed for materials from different aggregators. Non-profit aggregators (such as Project Muse, JSTOR, and ACLS Humanities e-Book), are not as engaged in reading platforms.
Libraries
Libraries are pivotal to the scholarly publishing ecosystem. They are significant purchasers of content from publishers and aggregators, and they are a primary source of published research, archival resources, and other materials for researchers.
Their role in the academic ecosystem is:
- curating collections of books (print and digital) by purchasing from publishers and aggregators
- making books discoverable or searchable to readers
- providing readers access to print books, digital files, and aggregator-created reading platforms
- providing patrons with services, tools, and other research support
Libraries are uniquely poised in that they interact with publishers, aggregators, and readers in various capacities, and they are ultimately responsible for placing books in readers’ hands. Unlike other relationships in the ecosystem, the one between libraries and readers is not a commercial one, as a library’s parent institution typically finances its activities.
However, library budgets have been dwindling over recent years, which has impacted their purchasing decisions. This has been a factor in a strong preference for providing digital access (via publisher or aggregator platforms) over print, since the overhead cost for digital files is far less than print, which requires checkout, shelving etc.
Despite these budget cuts, libraries continue to offer important services to students and faculty at their institutions, providing essential support to the research community.
Readers (and Authors)
Readers are, of course, the driving force behind the whole scholarly reading ecosystem. The most obvious reason is that readers are consumers of content, and authors create that content. Without demand for content from readers, publishers (as well as aggregators and libraries) would have little reason to exist. Authors (and editors), those who produce the content we’re discussing, are of course also readers. We can consider authors a subset of readers. All readers are authors, not all authors are readers. Readers also include faculty and students, but we’ll discuss that more in the educational institutions section.
In the cycle of scholarly publishing as described above, the reader has two critical roles:
- to access and consume content
- to produce more scholarly research
In the context of students, which we’ll discuss below, the reader has an additional role that is essential to the ecosystem of scholarly publishing:
- to assign textbooks in courses
- to purchase textbooks assigned by instructors
Readers are also authors, and they are authors who are driven to publish not for direct financial reasons, but because published original research is the central mechanism of career advancement in academia. The connection between consuming (reading) and creating (writing) is critical to the academic ecosystem.
Publishers acquire (or commission) manuscripts, which allows them to publish and sell books. In exchange, authors may receive royalties (which range from minimal to massive amounts—in the current climate of low sales, it is more often the former than the latter), but they also receive professional validation. Publishing a monograph is critical to career advancement for scholars in the Humanities, and a publisher offers not only an avenue to publication, but also quality assurance, via editorial and peer review, as well as prestige value through their reputation. This relationship is the critical last piece of the cycle introduced earlier.
However, while readers form the linchpin of the scholarly publishing ecosystem, their needs — beyond basic access to content— are rarely considered a priority. Readers are indirectly impacted by publishers and aggregators who supply reading and discovery tools, that are typically restricted in various ways by digital rights management (DRM). Typically, these DRM-enforced restrictions conflict with the readers’ needs. This mismatch of interests has emerged in large part due to the evolution of publishing technologies, the considerable challenges of the shifting digital landscape, and increasing financial pressures on publishers and libraries.
Educational Institutions
This is an area with considerable overlap regarding other entries. Universities employ faculty and researchers who produce the vast majority of scholarly journal articles published each year. Then have to pay to access the heavy majority of those articles in the way of library database subscriptions. For this entry’s purposes, we are examining the role educational institutions play in the ecosystem of academic publishing as textbook consumers.
We can divide educational institutions into two main areas here:
| Educational Institute | Role in the Ecosystem |
|---|---|
| K–12 | In the majority of cases, schools still provide the books students use in classes. To mitigate costs in the face of perpetual budget cuts, many schools, and teachers are embracing digital media and ebooks, although challenges persist in that area. |
| University Faculty and Bookstores | At the university level, the relationship is different, with students required to purchase their textbooks. University libraries rarely purchase textbooks for their courses, due to frequency of loss and the fact that publishers release new editions every few years. While some publishers have been accused, perhaps fairly, of excessive releases of new editions as a way to minimize the market for used textbooks, regular updates are needed to keep books current and relevant. |
In this system, university faculty assign textbooks of their choice, and students then purchase them. Historically, university bookstores and off-campus bookstores handled student demand. Recently, the addition of Amazon to the equation is exerting a new pressure on the system.
The OER movement has seen far more engagement in higher education than in K-12, as universities look to improve student success by reducing financial burdens. Thanks to the fact that faculty have the freedom to assign whichever texts they please, while K-12 curricula have to be matched with state educational standards.
The 2021 Student PIRGs report, relating results of a survey of 5,000 college students, found that 65% of students reported skipping buying a textbook due to cost[1]. Further, the report found that more than 20 percent of students had skipped purchasing an online access code, a number that rose to 38 percent among food-insecure students. A striking 94 percent of respondents indicated that they were worried this behavior would negatively affect their grades. A 2018 report on a survey of 21,000 Florida college students found that 64 percent of students reported having not purchased the required textbook[2]. That same study also found students reporting “taking fewer courses (42.8%); not registering for a specific course (40.5%); earning a poor grade (35.6%); and dropping a course (22.9%)” (p. 4).
The good news is, OER appears to be having a real effect on higher education textbook costs. A 2022 survey, also of university students in Florida, found that average total costs for students decreased slightly since 2018, after increasing over 800% since 1980. The total impact of reported adoptions of OpenStax books, for example, is now over $1 billion. At the same time, publishers are increasingly moving to offer content that Open Educational Resources are currently less likely to be able to offer, such as online test and quiz banks which relieve instructors of tedious grading labor. They’re also offering blended packages, which consist of both proprietary and freely accessible content.
It is, in short, a time of great change in textbooks and digital educational resources. We’ll get into OER and current trends in much more detail later, module 6. First, let’s continue with the ecosystem of academic and scholarly publishing.
[2] Florida Virtual Campus (2019) 2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey.
