Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the costs and benefits

Authors: John Houghton, Bruce Rasmussen and Peter Sheehan, Victoria University and Charles Oppenheim, Anne Morris, Claire Creaser, Helen Greenwood, Mark Summers and Adrian Gourlay, Loughborough University
Publication date: 27 January 2009
Publication Type(s): Reports
JISC theme(s): Information environment
Programmes: Repositories and Preservation programme

Press Release (JISC-ANNOUNCE)

January 27th, 2009: Sharing research information via a more open access publishing model would bring millions of pounds worth of savings to the higher education sector as well as benefiting UK plc. This is one of the key findings from a new research project commissioned by JISC.

Professor John Houghton from the Centre of Strategic Economic Studies at Melbourne’s Victoria University and Professor Charles Oppenheim at Loughborough University were asked to lead research that would throw light on the economic and social implications of new models for scholarly publishing.

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.

JISC’s Chair Professor Sir Tim O’Shea said, “The argument for moving from more traditional subscription or toll-based publishing to a model that allows for greater accessibility and makes full use of the advances in technology cannot be ignored. This report shows there are significant savings to be made and benefits to be had.”

“JISC will work with publishers, authors and the science community to identify and help to remove the barriers to moving to these more cost-effective models,” he added.

Sir Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, commended the report and added that, “as a research funder that provides additional funds to its grantholders to meet the cost of open access publishing, I am delighted that this report vindicates this approach and shows that the benefits of enhanced accessibility outweigh the costs of supplementing research funds with ‘author-pays’ open access publishing fees”.

Professor Ian Diamond, speaking on behalf of Research Councils UK said,”RCUK welcomes this substantial and interesting report. It will be of great use to the Research Councils as we develop our future policies in relation to publishing and in particular open access.”

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“Indeed, I felt that they looked set to exemplify the old adage that the sum of some phenomena is always greater than the constituent parts. But if that was right, I wondered, what was the sum in this case?

“I was also intrigued as to why they were emerging now. For while it was apparent that these movements Â? including Open Source and Free software, Creative Commons, Free Culture, Open Access, Open Content, Public Knowledge, Open Data, Open Source Politics, Open Source Biology, and Open Source Journalism etc. Â? all owed a great debt to the development of the Internet, it was not clear to me that the network was the only driver.

“The genesis of the Free Software Movement, for instance, could be said to lie in the specific culture of the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT in the 1970s, rather than the Internet. And at that time software programs were still generally written as part of large-scale centralised projects, and distributed on floppy disks or tapes. So I suspected that the Internet was not a sufficient explanation on its own.

“Additionally, I was curious about the individuals who had founded these movements: What had motivated them? Why did they feel so passionate about the cause that they had adopted? What did they think the various movements had in common (if anything) with one another? What was the big picture?

“All in all, it seemed to me to be good material for a book; a book that I envisaged would consist primarily of a series of Q&A interviews with the key architects and advocates of what I had come to call the Free Knowledge movement Â? people like John Perry Barlow, John Gilmore, Michael Hart, Richard Stallman, Eric Raymond, Linus Torvalds, Jay Rosen, Lawrence Lessig, Joe Trippi, Harold Varmus, Vitek Tracz, Stevan Harnad, Paul Ginsparg, Cory Doctorow, Yochai Benkler, Richard Jefferson, Michel Bauwens etc.

“I eventually started publishing the interviews on my blog, as The Basement Interviews. And much to my pleasure I began to receive positive feedback almost immediately. I also felt the big picture was beginning to emerge, although the project remains ongoing for now.

“Many of those who have contacted me have urged me to seek out a publisher. A publisher, they insist, would be able to market the interviews in ways that Â? whatever the advantages of self-publishing on the Web Â? I was not able to do. Besides, they added, it would be great to have access to a print copy of the collected interviews.

“Others were less sure. As one reader who emailed me put it, “Now the interviews are in the blogosphere they will surely find their own audience.”

“What do you think? I’d be interested to hear. I’d also be interested for suggestions as to who is missing from my list of interviewees. Who else, that is, do you think of as a key architect or advocate for the Free Knowledge movement that has not been mentioned here? I can be contacted at richard.poynder@btinternet.com

“Further details about The Basement Interviews can be accessed here

“The interviews thus far can be read by clicking on the links below:”

     1. Michael Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg
     2. Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software movement
     3. Eric Raymond, a co-founder of the Open Source Initiative
     4. Jay Rosen, a leading proponent of Open Source journalism
     5. Lawrence Lessig, the founder of the Free Culture movement
     6. Cory Doctorow, a cyber activist and specialist in copyright and digital rights management
     7. Vitek Tracz, the first Open Access publisher
     8. Harold Varmus, a Nobel laureate, a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health and now one of the co-chairs of the Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in the Obama administration.
     9. Richard Jefferson, the leading advocate for the Biological Open Source Movement
    10. Stevan Harnad, the self-styled archivangelist
    11. Peter Suber, the de facto leader of the Open Access movement
    12. Michel Bauwens, the creator of the Foundation for P2P Alternatives

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Richard Poynder writes about information technology, telecommunications, and intellectual property. In particular, he specialises in online services; electronic information systems; the Internet; Open Access; e-Science and e-Research; cyberinfrastructure; digital rights management; Creative Commons; Open Source Software; Free Software; copyright; patents, and patent information.

Richard Poynder has contributed to a wide range of specialist, national and international publications, and edited and co-authored two books: Hidden Value and Caught in a Web, Intellectual Property in Cyberspace. He has also contributed to radio programmes.