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Ten years of a ‘quiet culture war’: where does it stand now? Cover

Ten years of a ‘quiet culture war’: where does it stand now?

By: Rick Anderson  
Open Access
|Jan 2026

Abstract

In 2014, I wrote ‘A quiet culture war in research libraries – and what it means for librarians, researchers and publishers’, arguing that there existed an ongoing conflict within the academic library profession over whether the library’s most important role is to support its local institution or to advance global priorities (specifically, progress towards open scholarship). Here I reassess the landscape ten years later, finding that this conflict has both persisted and deepened, and offer two predictions: first, that the broader systemic conflict between competing business models will not be resolved by libraries, authors or publishers, but rather by institutions and funders, and second, that the end result will be a system characterized by coexisting models of pay‑access and open‑access publishing.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.712 | Journal eISSN: 2048-7754
Language: English
Submitted on: Mar 6, 2025
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Accepted on: Apr 25, 2025
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Published on: Jan 13, 2026
Published by: Ubiquity Press
In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services
Publication frequency: 3 issues per year

© 2026 Rick Anderson, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 39 (2026): Issue 0