Economic implications of alternative scholarly publication models

Very meaty report to JISC - Economic implications of alternative scholarly publication models [286 pages, 2.25 MB] - published today, by John Houghton, Bruce Rasmussen, Peter Sheehan, Charles Oppenheim, Anne Morris, Claire Creaser, Helen Greenwood, Mark Summers and Adrian Gourlay, which examines the costs and benefits of three alternative models for scholarly publishing, namely: subscription publishing; open access publishing; and self-archiving.

Difficult to gut it (while sitting in the meeting in which it was tabled) in the absence of a good executive summary, but here is an extract from the JISC media release about the report:

"The research centred on three models which include:

• Subscription or toll access publishing which involves reader charges and use restrictions;
• Open access publishing where access is free and publication is funded from the authors' side; and
• Open access self-archiving where academic authors post their work in online repositories, making it freely available to all Internet users.

In their report, Houghton et al. looked beyond the actual costs and savings of different models and examined the additional cost-benefits that might arise from enhanced access to research findings.

The research and findings reveal that core scholarly publishing system activities cost the UK higher education sector around £5 billion in 2007. Using the different models, the report shows, what the estimated cost would have been:

• £230 million to publish using the subscription model,
• £150 million to publish under the open access model and
• £110 million to publish with the self-archiving with peer review services plus some £20 million in operating costs if using the different models.

When considering costs per journal article, Houghton et al. believe that the UK higher education sector could have saved around £80 million a year by shifting from toll access to open access publishing. They also claim that £115 million could be saved by moving from toll access to open access self-archiving.

In addition to that, the financial return to UK plc from greater accessibility to research might result in an additional £172 million per annum worth of benefits from government and higher education sector research alone."

Comments

[Clayton R. Wright]

Thanks for informing me about the "economic implications of alternative scholarly publication models". The conclusions sound wonderful. But now I have to read the report and determine for myself whether the financial benefits are as large as noted. However, I do believe that we limit access and thus the use of information when we publish solely in tightly controlled paid journals. Open access publishing is definitely preferable, but there is a cost that must be borne by someone - a cost to organize the review of the article, to edit it, convert it to various formats (e.g., html, pdf, and/or mp3), and present it to the public (presentation on your website or someone elses, access to the internet, etc.,). The use of volunteers is welcomed, but over the long run someone has to organize the publication and ensure that quality standards are maintained. Think of Wikipedia, they primarily run on volunteers, but they still need to gather funds to support the initiative. One must think of the above costs as well as the equipment to do it, the software, and maintenance costs. We all like stuff for free, but there is always a cost - Who is going to pay for it or donate time equipment, etc. over the LONG term? Is this something an institution would like to donate its resources to? Is this something the government should sponsor as it hopes to recoup costs when ideas that are freely available spur development and new businesses?