<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>(Cross-posted)</div><div><br></div>The Economist has published another piece on open access publishing:<br><br><a href="http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21577035-open-access-scientific-publishing-gaining-ground-free-all">http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21577035-open-access-scientific-publishing-gaining-ground-free-all</a><br><br>I was struck by one paragraph in particular:<br><br><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;">Outsell, a Californian consultancy, estimates that open-access journals generated $172m in 2012. That was just 2.8% of the total revenue journals brought their publishers (some $6 billion a year), but it was up by 34% from 2011 and is expected to reach $336m in 2015. The number of open-access papers is forecast to grow from 194,000 (out of a total of 1.7m publications) to 352,000 in the same period.</blockquote><br><br><div>By my reckoning this means that in 2012 the revenue breakdown was :</div><div><br></div><div>For Open Access = $890 per paper ($172m / 194k papers)</div><div>For Sub Access = $3,500 per paper ($6 billion / 1.7m papers) </div><div><br></div><div>If the 194,000 papers published in OA had been published in subscription journals the extra costs could have been around $500 million ((3500-890)x194000). If you believe that all of these papers would probably have been published whatever the business model you could recast this as the worldwide community having made a saving of $500 million.</div><div><br></div><div>If all 1.7m papers published in 2012 had been OA at $890 per paper the $6 billion a year business would shrink to a $1.5 billion a year business.</div><div><br></div><div>There are lots of assumptions here (not least that my maths are correct), but it is clear that </div><div><br></div><div>a) the direct costs of publishing in OA journals are current significantly lower than publishing in subscriptions journals</div><div><br></div><div>b) the average cost per paper in OA is significantly lower than the roughly £1,450 per article that represented the break-even point for the UK under which the UK would save money if we moved totally to OA</div><div><br></div><div>c) the average is much, much lower than the typical price being offered for 'hybrid' OA. </div><div><br></div><div>It would be very easy to construct an argument that the $890 per paper figure is not scaleable to all of journal publishing, but it is interesting that, at least for the moment, the figure is so low.</div><div><br></div><div>David</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div><br></div><br></div></body></html>