[GOAL] Houghton Report on OA Cost/Benefits in Germany

[Stevan Harnad]

*General cost analysis for scholarly communication in Germany: results of
the 'Houghton Report' for
Germany<http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/27530>
* by John W. Houghton, Berndt Dugall, Steffen Bernius, Julia Krönung,
Wolfgang König

*Some comments on the Management Summary of the Houghton Report (MSHR):*

Like previous Houghton
Reports<http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/reports/2009/economicpublishingmodelsfinalreport.aspx>,
this one has carefully compared unilateral and global cost/benefits for
Gold Open Access Publishing and Green Open Access Self-Archiving. In this
case, the options also included the German National License Program (NLP),
a negotiated national site license providingGerman researchers with access
to most of the journals they need.

As it found in other countries, the Report finds that Green OA
self-archiving provides the best benefit/cost
ratio<http://www.cfses.com/projects/Going%20for%20Gold%20-%20Comment%20and%20Clarification%20(Houghton%20and%20Swan).pdf>
in
Germany too.

It needs to be noted, however, that among the scenarios compared, only
subscription publishing (including licensed subscriptions) and Gold OA
publishing are *publishing models*. Green OA self-archiving is not a
substitute publishing model but a system of providing OA under the
subscription/licensing model -- by supplementing it with author
self-archiving (and with self-archiving mandates adopted by authors'
institutions and funders).

*MSHR: "Open Access self-archiving… [is] further divided into (i) Green
Open Access’ self-archiving operating in parallel with subscription
publishing; and (ii) the ‘overlay services’ model in which self-archiving
provides the foundation for overlay services (e.g. peer review, branding
and quality control services))"*

Strictly speaking, the "overlay services model" is just another
hypothetical Gold OA publishing model, but one in which the Gold OA fee is
only paying for the service of peer-review, branding and quality control
rather than for the all the rest of the products and services journals that
are currently still being co-bundled in journal subscriptions and their
costs (print edition, online edition, access-provision, hosting, archiving).

This hypothetical Gold OA model is predicated, however, on the assumption
that there is universal Green OA self-archiving too, in order to perform
the access-provision, hosting and archiving functions of what was formerly
co-bundled under the subscription model.

Hence for existing journals the "overlay" Gold OA model is really just the
second stage of a 2-stage transition
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/> that
begins with the Green OA self-archiving access-provision system. In such a
transition scenario, although Green OA would begin as a supplement to the
subscription model, it would become an essential contributor to the
sustainability of the overlay Gold OA model.

*MSHR: **"comparing costs and benefits… [of] open access on returns to R&D
over a 20 year period… we find that the benefits of open access publishing
models are likely to substantially outweigh the costs and, while smaller,
the benefits of the German NLP also exceed the costs."*

Again, it needs to be kept in mind that what are being compared are not
just independent alternative publishing models, but also supplementary
means of providing OA; so in some cases there are some very specific
sequential contingencies and interdependencies among these models and
scenarios.

*MSHR: **"The NLP returns substantial benefits and savings at a modest
cost, returning one of the highest benefit/cost ratios available from
unilateral national policies during a transitional period (second to that
of ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving)."*

I presume that in considering the costs and benefits of German national
licensing the Houghton Report considered both the unilateral German
national licensing scenario and the scenario if reciprocated globally. In
this regard, it should be noted that OA has both user-end benefits
[maximized access] and author-end benefits [maximized impact]: Unilateral
national licenses provide only the former, not the latter. Both unilateral
Green and unilateral Gold, in contrast, provide only the latter but not the
former. So what needs to be taken into account is global scalability and
sustainability: How likely are other nations (and institutions) to wish --
and afford - to reciprocate under the various scenarios?
*


*

*MSHR:**

"Whether ‘Green Open Access’ self-archiving in parallel with subscriptions
is a sustainable model over the longer term is debatable"

*


First of all, if subscription publishing itself is not a sustainable model,
then of course Green OA self-archiving is not a sustainable supplement
either.

But in the hypothetical "overlay" Gold OA model it is being assumed that
Green OA self-archiving is indeed sustainable -- as a practice, not as a
substitute form of publishing. (It is naive to think of spawning 28,000
brand-new Gold OA peer-reviewed journals in place of the circa 28,000
journals that exist today: A conversion scenario is much more realistic.)

And probably the most relevant sustainability question is not about the
sustainability of the practice of Green OA self-archiving
(keystrokes<http://openaccess.eprints.org/keystrokes%20blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/>
 and institutional repositories <http://roar.eprints.org/>), nor the
sustainability of subscription publishing, but *the sustainability of
subscription publishing in parallel with universal Green OA self-archiving*.
One natural possibility is that globally mandated Green OA self-archiving
will make journal subscriptions unsustainable, inducing a transition in
publishing models, with journals, under cancelation pressure, cutting
inessential products and services and their costs, and downsizing to what
is being here called the "overlay" Gold OA model (though that's probably not
the aptest term <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/265617/> to describe the
outcome), while at the same time releasing the subscription cancelation
funds to pay the much lower peer review service fees it entails.*

MSHR: "The results are comparable to those of previous studies from the UK
and Netherlands. Green Open Access in parallel with the traditional model
yields the best benefits/cost ratio."

*And what also need to be taken into account are *sequential contingencies
and priorities*: Green OA self-archiving is not only the cheapest, fastest
and surest way to provide OA, but it is also the natural way to induce a
subsequent transition to affordable, sustainable Gold OA. But in order to
be able to do that, it has to come first.*

MSHR: "Beside its benefits/cost ratio, the meaningfulness of the NLP is
given by its enforceability.|

*Green OA self-archiving mandates are enforceable too. And global
scaleability and sustainability has to be taken into account too, not just
local access-provision.*

MSHR: "The true cost of toll access publishing (beside[s] the [cost of the]
"buyback” of information) is the prohibition of access to research and
knowledge for society."

*But when toll access publishing is globally supplemented by mandatory
Green OA self-archiving, the "prohibition" is pre-empted, at next to no
extra cost.

*Stevan Harnad*
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