Open Access News

John Houghton, Jos de Jonge, Marcia van Oploo, Costs and Benefits of Research Communication: The Dutch Situation, May 29, 2009.  A major new report sponsored by the Dutch SURFfoundation.  From the summary:

This study examines the costs and potential benefits of alternative models for scientific and scholarly publishing in the Netherlands. It is a follow-up of the Australian study ‘Research Communication Costs, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits’ (Houghton et al. 2006) and the UK/JISC study ‘Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models’....

This study focused on comparing three alternative models for scholarly publishing, namely:  subscription publishing, open access publishing (Gold Open Access) and self-archiving (Green Open Access)....

As many of the potential cost savings cannot be fully realised unless there is worldwide adoption of open access alternatives, Houghton’s model estimates the impact of a worldwide open access system although it also models the impact of unilateral adoption of alternative open access models by the Netherlands. Furthermore, a distinction is made between impact on the whole of the Netherlands and specifically for the Dutch universities....

Adding up the costs of production, publishing and dissemination in electronic-only format, the average subscription publishing system costs would amount to around € 17,046 per article (excluding Value-Added Tax), average open access publishing costs would amount to € 15,857 per article and average open access self-archiving costs would be € 15,331 per article (including overlay review and production services with commercial margins). At these costs, open access publishing would be around € 1,190 per article cheaper than subscription publishing, and open access self-archiving with overlay services around € 1,715 per article cheaper.

For the universities, the difference in journal article publishing costs would have amounted to savings of around € 30 million per annum in the case of a shift from subscription access to open access publishing, and even € 43 million based on a shift to open access self-archiving with overlay services. While alternative publishing models for scholarly books are much less developed and costing is more speculative as a result, similar savings would appear to be available from shifting to open access book publishing....

The estimated savings

• ‘Gold OA’ open access publishing for journal articles might bring net system savings of around € 133 million per annum nationally in the Netherlands in a worldwide open access system, or € 37 million if the Netherlands adopted open access unilaterally (based on 2007 prices and levels of publishing activity), of which around € 107 million and € 32 million, respectively, would accrue in the universities.
• Open access self-archiving without subscription cancellations (i.e. ‘Green OA’) would save around € 50 million per annum nationally in a worldwide Green OA system, of which around € 30 million would accrue in the universities. In a unilateral situation, an additional cost of € 11 million would result in a benefit of € 68 million.
• 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....

Conclusions...

It seems likely that more open access would have substantial net benefits in the longer term and, while net benefits may be lower during a transitional period they are likely to be positive for both open access publishing and self-archiving alternatives (i.e. Gold OA) and for parallel subscription publishing and self-archiving (i.e. Green OA). Both open access publishing and self-archiving with overlay services appear to be more cost-effective systems for scholarly publishing, with cost savings available throughout the scholarly communication process (i.e. in funding, performing, publishing, disseminating and preserving research). Nevertheless, a shift from a user-side to producer-side system for funding scholarly publishing implies a greater concentration of costs and diffusion of benefits, with costs concentrated among the most intensive producers of scholarly content and benefits diffused across many users....

Also see today's press release:

If every scientific and scholarly article were publicly available, it would save the Netherlands EUR 133 million a year....

Even if the Netherlands were the only country to adopt this publication model and continued to pay for licences to access periodicals, there would still be a saving of EUR 37 million....

The director of SURFfoundation, Wim Liebrand, welcomed the results of Prof. Houghton’s study: “The study makes clear that Open Access offers a realistic alternative to the traditional publisher’s model based on licences....”

The study was commissioned by SURFfoundation and forms part of a series of similar studies carried out in Denmark, Germany, and the United Kingdom. A survey will soon be published of the advantages that Open Access publication offers in those countries....

Also see our past posts on Houghton's research on the economic impact of OA, including criticism from TA publishers and Houghton's responses. 

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