[GOAL] Houghton & Swan 2013 (DLib): "Planting the Green Seeds for a Golden Harvest"

[Stevan Harnad]

D-Lib Magazine

January/February 2013
Volume 19, Number 1/2

Planting the Green Seeds for a Golden
Harves<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january13/houghton/01houghton.html>t:
Comments and Clarifications on "Going for Gold"

John Houghton
Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
john.houghton at vu.edu.au

Alma Swan
Key Perspectives, Truro, United Kingdom
aswan at keyperspectives.co.uk

doi:10.1045/january2013-houghton

Abstract

The economic modelling work we have carried out over the past few years has
been referred to and
cited<http://uksg.metapress.com/content/e062u112h295h114/fulltext.html>a
number of times in the discussions of the Finch
Report<http://www.researchinfonet.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Finch-Group-report-FINAL-VERSION.pdf>and
subsequent policy developments in the UK. We are concerned that there
may be some misinterpretation of this work. This short paper sets out the
main conclusions of our work, which was designed to explore the overall
costs and benefits of Open Access (OA), as well as identify the most
cost-effective policy basis for transitioning to OA at national and
institutional levels. The main findings are that disseminating research
results via OA would be more cost-effective than subscription publishing.
If OA were adopted worldwide, the net benefits of Gold OA would exceed
those of Green OA. However, we are not yet anywhere near having reached an
OA world. At the institutional level, during a transitional period when
subscriptions are maintained, the cost of unilaterally adopting Green OA is
much lower than the cost of unilaterally adopting Gold OA — with Green OA
self-archiving costing average institutions sampled around one-fifth the
amount that Gold OA might cost, and as little as one-tenth as much for the
most research intensive university. Hence, *we conclude that the most
affordable and cost-effective means of moving towards OA is through Green
OA, which can be adopted unilaterally at the funder, institutional,
sectoral and national levels at relatively little cost.*
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