The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics: Sustaining the knowledge commons (open access scholarship)

"It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge that Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has selected my proposal Sustaining the knowledge commons (open access scholarship) for funding in the amount of $71,000 Canadian for the period 2014 - 2016. This suite of research projects involves an open research approach; to facilitate sharing of knowledge in this area (both existing knowledge and new knowledge gained through this suite of research projects) I've created a new project blog, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons (open access scholarship) which can be found at sustainingknowledgecommons.org A summary of the research proposal has been posted on this new blog and is copied below for the convenience of readers of IJPE. Watch for more on this as the research unfolds ... The proposed research would create a macro-level analysis on the economics of an open access scholarly journal publishing system through the examination of three separate but related areas of research: 1. a thorough in-depth analysis on the article processing fees charged by some open access journals; 2. an examination of the resources needed by small not-for-profit scholar-led publishers (e.g. needs for editorial or technical support); and 3. supplementing the work of Edgar & Willinsky (2010) that found an average revenue of $188 per article for journals using Open Journal Systems, by factoring in infrastructure costs for journal hosting services. The proposed budget allocates over 80% to research assistantships as this proposal is my first step towards the creation of a research centre and the active participation of students is a crucial first step to the research centre. In addition, the proposed research will help university libraries to make prudent decisions to transition the underlying economics of scholarly publishing (currently the vast majority of funding for the system comes from university library budgets) from a subscriptions / purchase to an open access basis. An open research approach to knowledge dissemination will help journals and libraries struggling with the transition early on in the process through sharing knowledge to date through a dedicated website. This research falls under the SSHRC priority area Digital Economy. Knowledge gained through this project is expected to benefit the other newer 'open' movements, including open education, open data and open government through the development of scenarios for transition that might be worth considering in these other areas ..."