Seb sez, "The Association for Learning Technology has published a brief guide about how to tender for a new publishing contract for a scholarly journal. This is, on the face of it, dry-as-dust stuff. But what underlies it is the sea change that is taking place in the way that peer-reviewed research is published, and, in particular, the move towards making the results of research (usually publicly funded….) publicly available under one or other Open Access model. Here is the abstract:"

Hundreds of societies publish journals in collaboration with publishers. Some may be considering how and whether to renegotiate or go out to tender. Some may be considering whether they can/should/wish to change the business model of the journal (e.g. by a move to Open Access). Other societies may be considering using an external publisher for the first time. This guide, based on our experience, is written for all of these. In mid October 2010 we issued a request for proposals (RFP) for a new publisher. We had interest from six publishers who asked questions about our intentions. We then received four proposals: one which offered an Open Access model only, one which offered both Open Access and conventional publishing as discrete alternatives, and two which offered approaches that included an Open Access component. Three of the proposals were from big publishers. After evaluating the proposals, ALT's Trustees decided in December 2010 to make the journal, which has been renamed Research in Learning Technology, a fully Open Access journal with effect from 1st January 2012.