Think tank urges academic publishing reform to ‘save £30m’ - Research Professional News

"Reforms to a “broken” UK academic publishing system could save £30 million for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, according to a think tank.

Reform Academic Publishing to Unblock Innovation, written by UK Day One’s Sanjush Dalmia and Jonny Coates, says that proposed reforms could immediately reduce costs to Dsit.

The report recommends UK Research and Innovation stop supporting open-access block grants to universities, arguing they cost £40 million every year and are used to pay article-processing charges to academic publishers.

Open-access block grants are currently used by UKRI to provide funding to support its own open-access policy.

Instead, £10m should go to direct support for “not-for-profit preprint servers” as well as “post-publication peer review platforms”, says the report...."