99
Costs
8.35. We noted earlier that it is unlikely that increases in access can be achieved without cost, although they will be modest in comparison with the amounts spent on other aspects of the research process. Some of the costs will be one-off, in setting up new policies, systems and services, others will continue for the medium term. The study for the Open Road report[1] estimated that the transition costs to universities and other research institutions in the UK, as well as to publishers, of a significant shift towards greater access using any one of the three mechanisms we have considered[2] would amount to between £2.5m and £7.0m in one-off costs (the highest for open access journals, the lowest for repositories); and between £0.2m and £4.0m a year (the highest for repositories, the lowest for licence extensions)in continuing costs. Much of those costs related to the time to be spent in negotiation, consultation, advocacy and monitoring.
8.36. Using all three mechanisms to increase access during the transition period as we recommend will give rise to transition and development costs, as well as continuing system costs, for each mechanisms. We consider each of them below.
Open access journals
8.37. We noted in Section 7 that the cash costs to the Research Councils and the HE sector—and to the UK as a whole—of a shift to publishing research articles in open access journals depend on four key factors:
- i. the average level of APCs;
- ii. the extent to which adoption in the UK is on average ahead of the rest of the world;
- iii. the proportion that is met from UK sources of the costs of APCs for articles with overseas as well as UK authors; and
- iv. the extent to which universities and other organisations can reduce their expenditure on subscriptions even as their expenditure on APCs rises, and the speed of that shift.
8.38. It is impossible to reach firm conclusions on any of these points. And on the level of APCs in particular, it would be wrong for us to make any recommendation as to what an appropriate level should be: a market has already been established by the existing open access journals, and competition in that market is likely to intensify as a result of the measures we recommend, as the move towards open access gathers pace, and as more leading journals offer the hybrid open access option. But some high-status journals, with correspondingly high rejection rates and other cost drivers, are likely to charge APCs much higher than the average currently being paid. Nevertheless, it is clear that under almost any plausible scenario, there
