bjoern.brembs.blog » A study justifying waste of tax-funds?

"Open Access (OA) pioneer and OA journal eLife founding member and sponsor, the Max Planck Society just released a white paper (PDF) analyzing open access costs in various countries and institutions and comparing them to subscription costs. Such studies are fundamental prerequisites for evidence-paced policies and informed decisions on how to proceed with bitterly needed reforms. The authors confirm the currently most often cited ballpark figures of a world-wide annual academic publishing volume around US$10b, averaging at around US$5000 for each of the approximately 2 million papers published every year. This confirmation from different sources than are usually cited is very valuable and solidifies our knowledge on the kind of funds available to the system. The authors detail that various institutions in various countries spend significantly less than the current subscription costs on their current author processing charges (APCs) for publishing in open access journals, around US$2000-3000 per article. They conclude from these data that a conversion from subscription to author-pays model would be at least cost-neutral (if not a significant cost-saver) and keep the publishing industry alive. I find these statements quite startling for a number of reasons ..."