Before I get to crystal-ball-gazing, I have to point out my track record, because it's really quite bad. Not only am I on record with a major prediction that didn't come true ("IRs in the US will fold"), I quite failed to predict a number of things that did, from Harvard's OA policy to California telling Nature Publishing Group to go suck eggs.
My brain looks at systems. That means I consistently miss outliers, game-changers. I also don't always calibrate my guesses on the durability of systems right.
So with that said, here are some things that wouldn't surprise me a bit in 2011.
- SCOAP3 eeks through; COPE backpedals or folds. What the open-access movement is facing in 2011 is a world where most of the low-hanging fruit has been plucked. Progress isn't easy or obvious any more (if it ever was), and it can't be made by the pioneers, entrepreneurs, and other earliest-of-early adopters. IRs are no longer fashionable (in the States, I add for my international readers). Gold-OA funds have to contend with the ever-widening maw of Big Deal renewals. My sense of attitudes among research-library administrators, as well as rank-and-file selectors, does not favor COPE's success or even survival.
- Academic samizdat sees a real copyright lawsuit. Those creeps over at Attributor may well be the instigators. If they're smart, they won't actually sue a university, much less a library; they'll go after Mendeley or something RapidShare-ish, to keep the slumbering faculty behemoth safely abed. It's not out of the question, however, that some tiny school somewhere with grossly inadequate or nonexistent "electronic reserves" protections (and I've seen such schools firsthand; the culprit, aside from faculty themselves, is generally a boundlessly clueless IT shop) will be the target.
- The initial campus NSF flurry will sputter. I'm worried about this myself. I encourage libraries and IT shops building data-management services on the strength of the NSF's plan requirement to diversify, and that quickly. Find non-NSF people to help. Do a survey or focus-group study to demonstrate non-NSF-related data-management needs. Pay some attention to the digital humanities. Do not plan to rely on a flood of NSF applicants; that flood is highly unlikely to materialize. There's plenty of work to do, don't get me wrong; most of the work just doesn't happen to be NSF work.
- FRPAA won't make it this time either. Sorry. Maybe next time. Or maybe the NSF won't wait for Congressional cover, though I emphasize the "maybe" on that one.
- Some chemistry department somewhere will drop ACS accreditation because the institution can't afford ACS journals. I have to admit, I have a little inside info on this one. But it's only logical, really.
- A bare handful of Big Deal renewals will blow up, à la California and NPG. This is likely to happen in the full glare of the public eye, despite publisher wishes and publisher NDAs, because Big Deals are just that big and that noticeable. Don't be gleeful about this, libraries, because…
- Faculty will start a lot of "why don't those damn librarians…" grumbling. If you'd like to hear some, pre-2011, have a listen to Amanda French and Tom Scheinfeldt in this episode of the Digital Campus podcast. Those damn librarians. Why don't they just fix this? Where's their damn spine?
- An IR's gonna fold. Yes, all right, I was wrong when I said this the first time, and I wouldn't be surprised to be wrong again. But I'll say it nonetheless. I see too many libraries who opened IRs on a wing and a prayer without adequate planning or even a sensible collection-development policy. Let's face it, folks: in the absence of mandates, the OA-via-IRs experiment failed. Let's also face that libraries can't run (much less re-run) expensive experiments these days. Result? Some IR somewhere will face a big budget ax. (Disclaimer: those who know me professionally know that the IR I run is getting merged out of existence. That doesn't count for purposes of this prediction; that would be cheating.)
- We'll see a bare handful more campus or patchwork mandates. I don't think we've quite seen the end of the post-Harvard wave. I do think we're close to that end—and there won't be a second wave, not without a lot more work and evangelism than the open-access movement is currently mustering. There just haven't been enough mandates quickly enough to start up an academic fashion.
- Another major university press will merge with its library or fold. I haven't a clue which one, but given the continued bumbling confusion among provosts about scholarly publishing being able to cover its nut (hint: it can't), and the continued denial among the humanities that the economics of monographs no longer hold water (hint: go all-digital, perhaps plus POD, or die), this is all but an inevitability. We'll see a few more small scholarly presses fold as well.
- Crowdsourced data-analysis projects will increase, and pick up more good press. GalaxyZoo alone practically guarantees this one, but the humanities are charging forward with some great transcription projects as well.
It'll be a challenging year, no doubt about it. Let's meet it with fortitude.