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My last two posts painted quite a bleak picture of the present and future of institutional media. Yet, I ended with some optimism for the future of what I would call trustworthy information. That optimism is not merely an opinion, it’s something more tangible. I have gathered a team to build a platform that can fulfil the same role institutional media fulfils now, but is structured to thrive rather than survive in the internet economy. This project is called Olas and I will talk about it in this post.
Over the last few years, similar to news media, a lot of ink has been spilled over perceived market failures in academic publishing. In a stark contrast with news media outlets however, science publishers are booming, with operating margins in the industry being some of the highest of any industry globally. These are achieved despite most of the output being found to be inaccurate when independent researchers attempt to replicate it.
It’s no secret that the media industry has been struggling for the best part of two decades. Countless hours have been spent considering ways in which to arrest the decline. Aside from the introduction of the subscription model, which only a minority of the industry has been able to make a success of, the sole business model innovation I can think of is a pay-per-article micropayment model.
