Publishing research papers: Which policy will deliver best value for your university
A briefing paper outlining key findings in the JISC-funded study Modelling Scholarly Communication Options: costs and benefits for universities. It suggests that universities may get better value for money and higher impact for their research by choosing open access.
The Modelling Scholarly Communications report looks at the costs and benefits to UK universities for various open access approaches to publication.
This briefing paper explains how the report applied open access models to a range of universities and worked out the costs and benefits of those models - and also explained the wider economic and societal benefits of enabling greater access to knowledge.
The paper gives an overview of the types of open access models discussed in the report, alongside a related explanation of open access journals, repositories and overlay repositories. It then provides an overview of the report’s key findings: briefly, open access gives UK research higher visibility and impact over time, and can help achieve a wide range of cost savings.
The paper then outlines how readers can apply the research to their own institutions, and feed their own data and research into an online model. It refers readers to JISC’s guide How to build a case for university policies and practices in support of open access, which explains this process.
The paper closes with a four point guide to realising the advantages from the open access model: (1) institute a university-wide policy on open access; (2) set up a repository (if one doesn’t already exist), (3) set up a fund to manage open acess publication charges; and (4) provide internal publicity about open access policies and procedures to provide researchers with guidance on the opportunities available to them.
Read this report in full