All entries for Tuesday 27 January 2009

Repositories are good because they save money.

Writing about web page http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/publications/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx

A report has just been released, describing research on publishing models for journal articles, comparing the costs of our traditional subscription based system with open access funded by authors' fees and open access publishing via online repositories. In theory, it ought to be significantly cheaper for UKHEs if we go down the open access route, according to the report.

The SherpaROMEO website lists the costs of journals which allow authors to pay a fee to publish under open access, and the costs seem to be very high, in some instances over £2000 per article: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/PaidOA.html

I haven't read the report in full, but I'm pretty sure that the costs it predicts and the savings that might be possible would only work if we went for open access in a wholesale way, as a whole sector, rather than piecemeal situation we have at the moment, which is reflected in Sherpa's list.

So, repositories could be a way to save a huge fortune. But they're not doing it yet, and we've got a long way to go in terms of engaging the authors and showing that it is worth their while to deposit on open access, before we can make that saving a reality.  

Jenny Delasalle : 27 Jan 2009 11:01 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem