Open Access – The perspective of small and medium-sized publishers

While Open Access agreements have been negotiated with a growing number of large publishers, smaller publishers have so far hardly figured in the debates on the Open Access transformation. We therefore asked representatives of 82 small and medium-sized scholarly publishers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland about their experiences, attitudes and offers on Open Access. The results of our survey show that Open Access is becoming increasingly important for these publishers and their authors, although there are clear differences in attitudes and knowledge regarding Open Access, depending on their size, subject areas and types of literature. For publishers, the key requirements for converting to Open Access are sufficient funding, more standardization and better communication with other stakeholders.