Three reports commissioned by the UK Open Access Implementation Group have, for the first time, set out some of the direct and indirect benefits of increased access to UK higher education research publications.

To begin with, there are some fairly jawdropping numbers to take in. The UK public sector already saves £28.6 million by using open access but it spends £135 million a year, made up of subscriptions and time spent trying to find articles, accessing the journal papers it needs to perform effectively. Each extra 5% of journal papers accessed via open access on the web would save the public purse £1.7 million, even if no subscription fees were to be saved.

Putting these figures on an organisation scale, one of the companies cited in the report on the benefits of open access to the private sector, SLR Consulting, estimates individual organisational savings of thousands of pounds a year, on the basis that “the major benefit (of open access) would come through easier and more immediate access to the full content of papers, saving time and effort in working around payment barriers. Such savings could be significant – as a rough calculation, a saving of only one man day per year across the entire company’s workforce would equate, in revenue terms, to around £100,000 per annum.”

But, while both impressive and timely given the current economic situation, these headline figures are only the tip of the iceberg of the benefits. Making more research free at the point of access, and easier to search across could certainly produce significant savings, but it could also lead to better decisions based on all the available evidence.

As one senior scientific officer in a specialist scientific unit of a large department of state observes in the report, “Open access would allow a lot more speculative reading, and reading around the subject, which is really useful for a holistic and high quality view to be developed.”

“The money saving aspect is the easiest to measure, which is why some of the reports spend quite a lot of time focusing on estimating those figures and I wouldn’t want to belittle those,” says Neil Jacobs, JISC programme director, Digital Infrastructure, “but I think the bigger picture is that the benefits to Britain’s innovation system are really the key ones, whether that’s innovation in the public sector or private sector or in the not-for-profit sector. Although it’s much harder to measure, really the reports only begin to scratch the surface of the ways in which you may be able to assess those benefits. It is things like shorter time to market, improved decision-making, better risk management, new product development, avoiding wasted duplication of effort. Those sorts of things are potentially massive in their implications for the UK innovation system and the organisations involved in it.”

The UK’s voluntary and charitable sector is a valuable asset to the country – it’s composed of 163,800 general charities employing 765,000 people and 19,800,000 formal volunteers - and the two most frequently mentioned barriers to accessing the research it needs for its work were cost (80%) and lack of time (46%). As one voluntary and community sector survey respondent comments, “It’s very frustrating to use Google Scholar and get a sense that a particular article MIGHT be relevant, but you’re not certain enough to spend the money to download it in case it’s not.”

For this sector, an indirect benefit of wider access to research through open access is also the enhanced authority and credibility of voice that comes with being able to cite sound evidence for policy positions or campaigns.

“These reports are important because they begin to show ways in which increased access and open access, in particular to research outputs, can really make a difference to the private and public sector and the not-for-profit sector as well,” says Neil Jacobs.

“Open access is not a panacea, it’s not a magic bullet, it doesn’t by itself make all the difference, but I think it’s a necessary condition and governments are increasingly putting in place policies that recognise that it is a necessary condition for the maximum amount of value to be gained from the public science base.”