Potential positive spiral in transition to open access

[Heather Morrison <heatherm@eln.bc.ca>]

The economics of transitioning to open access is a challenge - 
but not one without tremendous benefits, not only for access, but 
for the economics of scholarly communication, in my opinion.

This is a topic I explore in a recent blogpost, A Potential 
Positive Cycle:  More Access, More Funds.

Abstract

Hypothesis: a process of transitioning to open access can unleash 
funds, creating a positive cycle of increasing access and freed 
funds to create more open access; the very opposite of the 
negative serials pricing spiral of recent decades, which featured 
increasing prices and decreasing access.

As support for this hypothesis, this post looks at the potential 
for open access if libraries were to focus on high-priced 
journals (US $1,000 or more for an institutional subscription), 
and succeed in working with their faculty to convert just 10% to 
a volunteer / in- kind support model.

It is estimated with such a scenario, that individual libraries 
could save up to $450,000 US from their budgets after spending on 
open access journal support is factored in. The cumulative 
savings for libraries are potentially huge; for example, if the 
ARL libraries subscribed to just a quarter of these journals 
each, the annual savings for ARL would be in the order of $13.8 
million annually. This would only be a fraction of the savings 
for libraries, as ARL is only a subset of libraries, albeit large 
ones. The true collective savings for libraries would have to 
factor in libraries around the globe, including libraries in 
Europe and the somewhat smaller libraries in North America. If 
these savings were invested in further open access initatives, 
libraries would save even more, freeing up more funds to create 
more access.

For details and calculations, please see the full blogpost at: 
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/06/potential-positive-cycle- 
more-access.html

While the focus of this blogpost is freeing funds for more open 
access, the same theoretical approach could be used to free funds 
to restore funding for scholarly monographs, humanities and 
social sciences, etc., that was lost in recent decades due to the 
serials pricing crisis.

Comments?

Any opinion expressed in this post is that of the author alone, 
and does not reflect the opinion or policy of BC Electronic 
Library Network or Simon Fraser University Library.

Heather Morrison, MLIS
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com