Starting over: applying new models that challenge existing paradigms in the scholarly publishing marketplace

Scholarly publishing has gone through turbulent times. Enormous growth in supply and expenditure has been followed – dramatically and unexpectedly – by severe contraction of budgets. The ‘creative destruction’ of the 2008 global financial crisis has produced new opportunities and forced legislators, administrators, academics and librarians to consider alternatives to traditional subscription models. This article presents a case study of one UK-based ‘gold’ publisher's attempts to create a viable, sustainable alternative, which aims to bring the same benefits of open access publishing to the social sciences and arts & humanities as have been proven to work in STM – so, providing insights into the strategic choices of product, scope and aims, pricing, marketing, etc. By the time of publication, Social Sciences Directory will have published its first issue, and Humanities Directory will be close to following suit.