Professor John Houghton of Victoria University in Melbourne and Professor Charles Oppenheim of Loughborough University led the research.
Three models were examined: subscription or toll access (reader charges and use restrictions), OA publishing (where publication is author-funded), and OA self-archiving (where academic authors post their work in free online repositories).
The study estimated that core scholarly publishing in total cost the UK higher education sector just under £5bn in 2007, and that the three models could save the sector hundreds of millions of pounds.
Houghton said greater accessibility to research could result in £172m worth of benefits a year to UK plc from government and higher education sector research alone.
In a joint statement, publishing associations PA, ALPSP and STM said: “OA publishing in all its variants is the subject of a series of experiments already running with our membership. Claims that if adopted universally an exclusively OA business model would generate large savings in the system costs for scholarly communication in the UK in our view remain unproven.”
JISC said it wanted to stimulate debate and would meet publishers shortly.
PS: Also see my post on the Houghton report, which includes longer excerpts from its findings.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/10/2009 10:30:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
