Impact of Social Sciences – The only way to make inflated journal subscriptions unsustainable: Mandate Green Open Access.

In light of further data provided by Tim Gowers on unsustainable costs of journal subscriptions for academic libraries and stretched university budgets, Stevan Harnad finds that plans for universities to fund open access alternatives will also be a burden as 80% of journals are still subscription-based. What is needed now is for universities and funders to develop mutually reinforcing self-archiving policies, like HEFCE’s new open access policy for the Research Excellence Framework.