Counting the Costs of Open Access in the UK « SPARC Europe

"SPARC Europe and London Higher, an organisation of universities in London, have jointly commissioned a study by Research Consulting into the overhead costs to universities of complying with the RCUK Open Access policy. RCUK’s policy ‘prefers’ Gold OA and RCUK has awarded block grants to universities to pay for article processing charges (APCs) levied by journals. The study has not been concerned with these APCs, but rather with the costs within institutions of actually acting upon and managing the policy. Costs fall in various places within a university and these places can vary between institutions depending on how each university has arranged the systems to manage the block grant. By drawing on data provided by a set of UK universities, the study has derived data on the level of these costs. While this is a UK-based study the data will also be of interest to universities and policymakers outside the UK ..."