Heading for the open road - costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications
A study undertaken in partnership by JISC, RIN, the Wellcome Trust, Research Libraries UK and the Publishing Research Consortium.
This study was designed to assess the potential improvements in access to research papers offered by various different approaches, including open access, and to give an indication of the costs, benefits and potential pitfalls of changing work practices and business models in order to produce that improvement.
The report opens by defining "access" as “user groups are able to read, download and print a scholarly article without additional cash payment by them or their institution”. We are then given a definition of five scenarios in which there is increased access, based upon varying proportions of different access models and licensing structures. These include two open access routes, a delayed access model with free access granted to material following embargo periods, a licence extension route granting increased access to higher education institutions and the NHS and a transactional (“pay per view”) route offering increased access to target user groups, such as the NHS.)
These scenarios are then subjected to an analysis of the costs, risks and steps necessary to achieve them, an analysis of the changes in access that they will bring about, and an analysis of the wider resulting economic benefits.
The change in access is measured in a “standardised unit of access” and a measure of “useful access” (which takes into account the potential for diminishing marginal returns to access as users have access to more and more articles). On both measurement scales, the five scenarios all produce a significant increase in access (ranging from 3.8% to 16.9%).
The transition costs and ongoing costs of each scenario are then plotted. The report states that only one of their five scenarios (the Gold open access route) could in principle reduce the net annual costs for the UK - and then only if there are sufficiently low author processing charges. It also notes that there are “significant uncertainties” surrounding the implementation of this scenario.
The cost benefit analysis follows, plotting the costs against the economic gains (relating to the increased stock of knowledge) to be made from increased access for the various user groups involved with the different scenarios (universities, government, NHS, corporations and small and medium sized enterprises). This is further refined with an analysis of some of the risks associated with implementing the various scenarios.
In their analysis of this data, the authors state: “Our judgment is that the two open access routes offer the greatest potential to policymakers in promoting access.” They recommend cautious transition to the two open access models, in parallel - provided that steps are taken to ensure open access via repositories does not lead to journal subscription cancellations; that author processing costs for open access journals do not rise too high and mechanisms are in place to ensure total payments from UK universities (and their funders) do not rise as a consequence of this transition.
Read this report in full