This document summarizes the perspectives of key stakeholders in academic publishing in Europe and discusses challenges and directions for the future, including issues around content, services, skills, costs and sustainability. It notes that while research volumes are increasing, resources are constrained, and there is growing interest in open access policies and concerns about the costs of transition. Users want easy access to both quality-assured and other content, as well as assessment services, but the digital environment is not fully understood. Providers are overlapping in some areas but complementarity also exists between researchers, libraries, publishers and other services. Seeing the future remains unclear but users must be the drivers while balancing quality, comprehensiveness, costs and sustainability.

1. The Road Ahead: Forward, But In What Direction? Michael Jubb Director, Research Information Network Academic Publishing in Europe Conference Berlin 21 January 2009

4. The big picture: overall costs of the current system

6. Challenges for the future skills services content sustainability locus of provision user expectations and needs

19. Thank you Michael Jubb www.rin.ac.uk Activities, Costs and Income Flows in Scholarly Communications : http://www.rin.ac.uk/costs-funding-flows Mind the skills gap: Information-handling training for researchers: http://www.rin.ac.uk/training-research-info To share or not to share: Publication and quality assurance of research data outputs : http://www.rin.ac.uk/data-publication Researchers' use of academic libraries and their services : http://www.rin.ac.uk/researchers-use-libraries