[LINK] Rather Fascinating study on Open Access

[Anthony Hornby]

Hi Tom,
Forgot to say thanks for the link :-)

It is important to make researchers aware that a wider move to Open
Access should translate into more field trips, more lab equipment,
more $$$ for what they actually care about - the doing of research +
make it a lot easier to discover and build on research that has gone
before and that the sky won't fall in on quality  if the status quo
changes.

This conference I attended last year had some interesting sessions -
might be worth a look.

http://www.oar2008.qut.edu.au/program/

Regards Anthony


2009/7/9 Anthony Hornby <anthony.w.hornby at gmail.com>:
> John keeps a list of publications here http://www.netspeed.com.au/jhoughton/
>
> Regards Anthony
>
> 2009/7/9 Tom Koltai <tomk at unwired.com.au>:
>> In June 2009 a study was completed that had been commissioned by
>> Knowledge Exchange and written by Professor John Houghton, Victoria
>> University, Australia. This report on the study was titled: "Open Access
>> - What are the economic benefits?
>>
>> A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark." This
>> report was based on the findings of studies in which John Houghton had
>> modelled the costs and benefits of Open Access in three countries. These
>> studies had been undertaken in the UK by JISC, in the Netherlands by
>> SURF and in Denmark by DEFF.
>>
>> In the three national studies the costs and benefits of scholarly
>> communication were compared based on three different publication models.
>> The modelling revealed that the greatest advantage would be offered by
>> the Open Access model, which means that the research institution or the
>> party financing the research pays for publication and the article is
>> then freely accessible.
>>
>> Adopting this model could lead to annual savings of around EUR 70
>> million in Denmark,
>>
>> EUR 133 million in The Netherlands and EUR 480 in the UK. The report
>> concludes that the advantages would not just be in the long term; in the
>> transitional phase too, more open access to research results would have
>> positive effects. In this case the benefits would also outweigh the
>> costs.
>>
>>
>> The work is an expansion ion Houghtons earlier report. (details in
>> Intro).
>>
>> This would imply a saving in Australia of around 160 million dollars
>> were a similar system implemented here.
>>
>>
>> Tom
>> ---------------------------------------
>> Open Access - What are the economic benefits?
>> A comparison of the United Kingdom, Netherlands and Denmark
>> Prepared and co-ordinated by John Houghton Centre for Strategic Economic
>> Studies Victoria University, Melbourne
>>
>> http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/Admin/Public/DWSDownload.aspx?File=%2
>> fFiles%2fFiler%2fdownloads%2fOA_What_are_the_economic_benefits_-_a_compa
>> rison_of_UK-NL-DK__FINAL_logos.pdf
>> Main Points
>> Building on previous work, this summary looks at the costs and potential
>> benefits of alternative
>> open access models for scholarly publishing in the UK, Netherlands and
>> Denmark - giving a
>> sense of the implications for one of the larger, a mid-sized and a
>> smaller European country.
>> Analysis focuses on comparing three alternative models for scholarly
>> publishing, namely:
>> subscription publishing, open access publishing and self-archiving. To
>> ensure that meaningful
>> comparisons could be made, the self-archiving models explored include
>> the peer review,
>> certification and quality control functions necessary for formal
>> scholarly publishing.
>> We estimate that in an open access world:
>> . Open access or 'author-pays' publishing for journal articles (i.e.
>> 'Gold OA') might
>> bring net system savings of around EUR 70 million per annum nationally
>> in Denmark,
>> EUR 133 million in the Netherlands and EUR 480 million in the UK (at
>> 2007 prices
>> and levels of publishing activity);
>> . Open access self-archiving without subscription cancellations (i.e.
>> 'Green OA') might
>> save around EUR 30 million per annum nationally for Denmark in a
>> worldwide 'Green
>> OA' system, EUR 50 million in the Netherlands and EUR 125 million in the
>> UK; and
>> . The open access self-archiving with overlay services model explored is
>> necessarily
>> more speculative, but a repositories and overlay services model may well
>> produce
>> similar cost savings to open access publishing.
>> The cost-benefits of the open access or 'author-pays' publishing model
>> are very similar across
>> the three countries. In terms of estimated cost-benefits over a
>> transitional period of 20 years,
>> open access publishing all articles produced in universities in 2007
>> would have produced
>> benefits of around 2 to 3 times the costs in all cases, but showed
>> benefits of 5 to 6 times costs in
>> the simulated alternative 'steady state' model for unilateral national
>> open access, and benefits of
>> around 7 times the costs in an open access world.
>> The most obvious difference between the national results relates to the
>> self-archiving and
>> repositories models, which while promising substantial net benefits in
>> all countries do not look
>> quite as good in the Netherlands as they do in the UK, and nothing like
>> as good as they do in
>> Denmark. This is due to the implied number of repositories, each with
>> operational overheads.
>> Notwithstanding this difference, the modelling suggests that more open
>> access alternatives are
>> likely to be more cost-effective mechanisms for scholarly publishing in
>> a wide range of
>> countries (large and small), with 'Gold OA' open access or author-pays
>> publishing, the
>> deconstructed or overlay journals model of self-archiving with overlay
>> production and review
>> services, and 'Green OA' self-archiving in parallel with subscription
>> publishing progressively
>> more cost-effective.
>>
>>
>>
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