Thursday, April 20, 2006

EC on OA: Hot summer for Reed Elsevier



Economists from two European universities have produced a report for the EC on Open Access to scientific research. The EC calls for consultation until June 1.

The report calls for OA-archiving (self-archiving) and recommends experimenting with OA publishing.

Obviously, this could be the start of a new round of hammering the Reed Elsevier stock. It hasn't performed very well, over the past few years, even if OA wasn't its largest threat. The question is: when wil it be?
So far, growth at the STM division is robust and allowing a limited form of OA-archiving could extend the current monopoly-like business model well into the future. From the shareholder point of view however, it's unfortunate that Reed Elsevier stands out as the most exposed to the OA movement.

At this point, it remains to be seen how far the EC is willing to go. Keep posted.

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