The Knowledge Exchange is a joint undertaking of some six European organizations, including JISC in the UK and DFG in Germany (both CNI members). They've done a great deal of work on changes in the scholarly communication system, and have recently published a book examining the economics of the transition to open scholarship that I think will be of interest to many in the CNI community. This can be found at

http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/event/os-collective-action

Below, more details on this work.

Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI

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I'm happy to let you know that Knowledge Exchange (KE) has published its first book "The Economy of Open Scholarship and the Need for Collective Action". 
The transition to Open Scholarship is immensely difficult and in this book we look for ways to move forward in realizing the full potential of openness.
 
The book aims to increase understanding of the challenges to make scholarship more open.  It addresses various perspectives offered by KE's Open Scholarship Framework, combining levels (micro, meso and macro-level actors), arenas (political, economic, social, technical) and research phases (discovery, planning, project phase, dissemination).
 
As many of the challenges in navigating the transition to Open Scholarship are economic, the focus of the book is on the economic arena. In addition, great attention is given to the incentives, actions and influences of meso-level actors: groups, communities or organisations such as universities, disciplines, scholarly societies or publishers because of their enormous impact on developing open scholarship.
 
Taking in the Open Scholarship landscape, the authors of the book - experts and experienced actors in the field of Open Scholarship - look at the stakeholders and their interactions and networks. They examine the historic developments leading to the current organisational complexity, responsibility issues, conflicting motives and values, and the importance of interaction between institutions.
 
The authors analyse how economic models can be applied to scholarship and conclude that economic theory cannot fully explain nor prescribe how Open Scholarship can be achieved. The challenges to achieve Open Scholarship, such as gravitational hubs and the complex governance of common pool resources, are highlighted.
 
The conclusion of the book is that for a successful transition to Open Scholarship, collective action approaches and establishment of a supportive infrastructure are key.
 


The Knowledge Exchange (KE) partners are six key national organizations within Europe tasked with developing infrastructure and services to enable the use of digital technologies to improve higher education and research: CSC in Finland, CNRS in France, DAFSHE in Denmark , DFG in Germany, Jisc in the UK and SURF in the Netherlands.