Counting the costs of open access for research organisations - Research Information

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-11-29

Summary:

" ... Although the administrative cost of open access for research organisations is a relatively small part of the overall picture, the increasing adoption of open access mandates by research funders is likely to have significant administrative and budgetary implications for such institutions in the coming years. The UK government is taking the lead in promoting the transition to open access, making it a central part of its research funding policy. Over the last two years, UK funders Research Councils UK (RCUK), the National Institute for Health Research and the Higher Education Funding Councils have all announced new open access requirements for recipients of their funding. The country’s major medical charities have also adopted open access mandates, following the lead taken by the Wellcome Trust. These policies have put UK universities under pressure to make the transition to open access in just over four years and provide an important test case for policy makers, funders, research organisations in other countries that are – or may soon be – contemplating the adoption of similar policies. A recent report published by Research Consulting provides a first estimate of the costs borne by UK universities to comply with national open access policies. At the aggregate level, it estimates the total cost borne by UK research organisations to comply with the Research Councils UK policy in the 2013-14 academic year at £9.2 million excluding APCs. Interestingly, the actual administrative costs of making articles available online account for less than 10 per cent of the total (£0.8m for ‘gold’ and £0.1m for ‘green’ open access). The largest proportion of the costs relate to staff time spent on policy implementation, management and advocacy (£4.4m, or 48 per cent of the total), and overheads (£2.2m, 24 per cent of the total).   Institutions spent a further £1.3m, or 14 per cent of the total, in developing systems and software to support the transition to open access. The lesson to take from this is that delivering open access at the scale now required in the UK involves significant changes to institutional cultures, processes and systems. Delivering this change is a costly and time-consuming process, equivalent to 110 full-time staff members across the UK in 2013/14 ..."

Link:

http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=1784

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.hefce oa.rcuk oa.uk oa.mandates oa.funders oa.universities oa.costs oa.reports oa.comment oa.new ru.sparc oa.hei oa.policies

Date tagged:

11/29/2014, 07:48

Date published:

11/29/2014, 00:14