The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now
The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now
Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing free online access (“Open Access,” OA) to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and estimates underlying Houghton et al’s modelling and analyses, but they are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The 40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et al. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas OA publishing depends on the publishing community. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that this outcome emerged from studies that approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of the economics of publication rather than the economics of research.
open access, green open access, self-archiving, institutional repositories, publishing economics, gold open access
55-59
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
March 2010
Harnad, Stevan
442ee520-71a1-4283-8e01-106693487d8b
Harnad, Stevan
(2010)
The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now.
Prometheus, 28 (1), .
(doi:10.1080/08109021003676367).
Abstract
Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing free online access (“Open Access,” OA) to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and estimates underlying Houghton et al’s modelling and analyses, but they are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The 40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et al. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas OA publishing depends on the publishing community. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that this outcome emerged from studies that approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of the economics of publication rather than the economics of research.
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Published date: March 2010
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Author Posting. (c) Informa plc 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here with the endorsement of Informa plc for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Prometheus, Volume 28 Issue 1, March 2010. doi:10.1080/08109021003676367 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08109021003676367 Commentary On: Houghton, J.W., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P.J., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., Greenwood, H., Summers, M. and Gourlay, A. (2009). Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, London and Bristol
Keywords:
open access, green open access, self-archiving, institutional repositories, publishing economics, gold open access
Organisations:
Web & Internet Science
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Local EPrints ID: 268514
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/268514
ISSN: 0810-9028
PURE UUID: 62905388-131e-44d9-9950-57d3922b2a36
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Date deposited: 16 Feb 2010 18:19
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 02:48
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Stevan Harnad
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