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Outline – Synergies Business and Sustainability Plan Rowland Lorimer 3 of 11
A defining characteristic of the scholarly and research publishing process is its autonomy
from academic institutions, an autonomy that complements and enhances academic
freedom. In the name of academic freedom, considerable effort is expended to achieve
and administer, for example, blind peer review, to ensure that publication decisions are
made solely on the merit of the research. Necessary as such autonomy is, it creates extrainstitutional
dependencies – on the marketplace, on research and other funding agencies,
and on enlightened access 1 to institutional funds.
For the most part in the print era, the market model governed access to the research
record through publication pricing, institutional and individual purchasing, and/or
membership in a scholarly society. While favouring wealthy countries, institutions, and
individuals, the ever-increasing over-exploitation of copyright by commercial science,
technology and medical (STM) journal-publishing firms interfered with effective
knowledge communication to potential beneficiaries.
In the print world, such shortcomings required certain practices and provisions workedarounds
around the shortcomings and inequities of the market model; for instance, the
record existed in libraries while researchers mailed off prints to other researchers who
requested them. In a digital world, the shortcomings of the print-based marketplace
model are more apparent and new. The absence of user-attributable costs beyond firstcopy
costs transforms subscriptions and other purchasing into a bottleneck rather than,For
instance, in a digital world, there is no need to separate the creation of the record from
dissemination. Similarly, the subscription-based model is no longer an imperfect but
understandable but imperfect means for allocating resources. That same absence makes
possible the The absence of user-based costs – printing and distributing a user's personal
copy – transforms subscriptions into an unnecessary bottleneck. The dynamics of digital
technology bring forward consideration of Open Access, that is to say, dissemination to
users without user fees, in more dramatic terms, the universal public distribution in
pursuit of universal dissemination of knowledge and hence the maximization of benefit to
humanity.
Synergies will provide major assistance in transforming the possible future of the digital
world into an operational reality. However, in the final analysis, Synergies can only serve
as a catalyst. The realization of the goal of both easy and public dissemination of research
requires action by the research and post-secondary education community as a whole.
Universities and researchers worldwide and acting in concert must find the means, in
collaboration with research funders, to support the crucial knowledge dissemination role
that journals and scholarly monographs, and other forms of non-commercial scholarly
publications, play.
Synergies Specifics
To achieve the benefits made possible by digital information and communication,
Synergies was designed to provide the following services:
1 I am using the term enlightened here to mean recognition of the greater good of the general community
rather than a responsibility for the interests of one’s own institution.
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