Historically, academic and scholarly publishing has exhibited many characteristics of so-called ‘closed’ industries where customers/end-users had limited or unfriendly tools to get what they want; long waiting periods for production and fulfillment; and expensive prices to boot. These dynamics have led to a call for more ‘openness’, such as the NIH ruling and the open access movement, and drawn the interest of technology companies who would like to capitalize on these inefficiences. While moving to openness can bear risk, it can also bear opportunity. In the realm of ‘unintended consequences’, creating better, faster, cheaper products also creates new markets and new customers previously unimagined.
