Understanding the current landscape of alternative publishing platforms

Rationale / Hypothesis:

Knowledge Exchange commissioned Research Consulting to work on a project to understand the current landscape of alternative publishing platforms, exploring how publishing platforms, research organisations and funders enable innovation in scholarly communication. Significant scoping was undertaken by Knowledge Exchange, published in the paper Scoping the second phase of the Alternative publishing platforms work.

Research Consulting developed a proposed thematic approach aiming to explore the core issues identified by Knowledge Exchange, looking across multiple stakeholder perspectives. The questions were thematically organised in a systematic way, to ensure comprehensive coverage across desk research and stakeholder engagement activities. These research questions and sub-questions are linked on Octopus as individual Research Problems, but the key themes and research questions are:

Funder strategy and policy: What approaches do research funders have towards alternative publishing platforms, and how important are they in the context of funders’ wider scholarly communication strategies?

Value proposition of alternative publishing platforms: What are the immediate and pressing challenges that alternative publishing platforms are trying to address?

Legitimacy of non-traditional research outputs: What types and formats of publication do funders and researchers consider to be “legitimate” research outputs?

Lessons learnt from alternative publishing: What lessons can be learnt from experience with alternative publishing platforms?

Uptake and continued engagement: What factors affect a researcher's decision to use (or not) an alternative publishing platform?

The research questions relating to funding strategy and policy and legitimacy in particular help bridge across stakeholder groups.

The five themes also provide a framework for analysing and presenting findings, making it easier to develop recommendations that address systemic issues rather than focusing on stakeholder-specific concerns.

The five themes, questions and sub-questions were iteratively refined and developed through dialogue between Research Consulting, a core group of Knowledge Exchange experts: Anna Mette Morthorst (DeiC), Sebastian Brandt (DFG) Xenia van Edig (TIB) and Jean-François Lutz (University of Lorraine) and the full authors of this output i.e. the wider Knowledge Exchange Task & Finish Groups and Prof Stephen Pinfield. This work took place throughout January and February 2025.

The questions seek to cover all questions in the original scoping document produced by KE (Knowledge Exchange, 2024), and no questions or areas have been excluded as part of the revised hierarchy and structure.