Scholarly Communication in a Knowledge-Based Economy John Houghton Centre for Strategic Economic Studies Victoria University, Melbourne

Drawing on three recent reports  Houghton, J.W. (2005) Digital Broadband Content: Scientific Publishing, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris.  Houghton, J.W. (2004) ‘Economics of Publishing and the Future of Scholarly Communication,’ International Year Book of Library and Information Management , Facet Publishing, London.  Houghton, J.W., Steele, C. and Henty, M. (2003) Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment, Department of Education, Science & Training, Canberra. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

A knowledge-based economy A knowledge economy is… “one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge has come to play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. It is not simply about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge; it is also about the more effective use and exploitation of all types of knowledge in all manner of economic activities." Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) (1998) Building the Knowledge Driven Economy: Competitiveness White Paper, London: Department of Trade and Industry. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

US National Research Council “The rapidly expanding availability of primary sources of data in digital form may be shifting the balance of research away from working with secondary sources such as scholarly publications. Researchers today struggle to extract meaning from these masses of data... [but] automated systems, and perhaps new intermediary institutions for searching and authenticating information, will develop to provide these services, much as libraries and scholarly publications served these roles in the past.” National Research Council (2001) Issues for Science and Engineering Researchers in the Digital Age, Washington: National Academy Press, p5. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

Economics of online distribution Current and emerging content business models can be seen as responses to changing cost structures and changing research practices.  The Big Deal – where institutional subscribers pay for access through consortial or site licensing arrangements.  Open access publishing (“Author Pays”) – supported by author, institutional or funder payments.  Open access archives and repositories – where organisations support institutional repositories and/or subject archives.  Hybrids – such as delayed open access & open choice. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

Advantages of the Big Deal Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  Improved access, with access to more titles – suits researchers in interdisciplinary areas and tends to lead to higher use.  Reduces the per title and per article costs of the overall package.  Can increase budgetary certainty for research libraries, through multi-year deals with fixed price increases agreed up-front.  Can increase access through consortial deals, especially for those previously poorly served.

Disadvantages of the Big Deal Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  Locks libraries into the major bundles and makes it more difficult to cancel titles.  Reduces substitutability and choice, and may reduce price elasticity of demand.  Tends to squeeze out smaller publishers.  May influence impact factors in favour major publishers.  Less pressure to axe low demand titles, so aggregate fixed costs may increase.  Access and use can be more restrictive.  Concern over access to previously subscribed to back issues, and over long term archival integrity.

Advantages of author pays Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  Increases access to the findings of research, increasing social returns to investment in research.  Costs should be lower than subscription-based models.  Scales publication to research activity, rather than library budgets.  Bypasses some of the failings of the subscription system.  Journals compete for authors rather than subscribers, so likely to increase substitutability between titles.

Disadvantages of author pays Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  May lead to inequality of opportunity, with publishing based on means rather than merit.  May not work for the humanities, arts and social sciences, where research funding is more limited.  May make it more difficult to establish a new journal.  May raise quality concerns due to economic pressure to lower rejection rates.  May make it more difficult to establish new journals.  May have a detrimental impact on institutional and society publishers.  May lead to major producers of knowledge paying more.  May create a free rider problem.

Advantages of archives/repositories Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  Access free and open, likely to promote dissemination and maximise the social benefits from R&D spending.  Speed of dissemination greater (eg. pre-prints).  Could be a relatively low cost alternative.  Potential for repositories to provide enhanced support for collaborative and inter-disciplinary research.  May contribute to the creation of a more complete record of scholarship, and overcome the publishing bias towards successful findings.  Could contribute to enhanced research evaluation.

Disadvantages of archives/repositories Centre for Strategic Economic Studies  Control over quality and posting may vary from archive to archive and institution to institution.  Concern over the handling of copyright – eg. possible limitations on posting published material and potential IP conflicts.  Potential lack of market segmentation for authors and access control over their works.  Relatively low rates of self-archiving to date – ie. the population issue.

Future business models?  Open access repositories have advantages over more traditional and limited forms of scholarly communication, but they cannot replace journal and monograph publishing at present because of the central role it plays in quality control and research evaluation.  In the immediate future, there is likely to be a period of experimentation, with an unbundling of the elements, new combinations and more transparency of costs involved.  In the longer term, emerging alternatives may gradually replace some of the objects and activities that have been central to scholarly publishing in the print era. Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

References  OECD – Digital Broadband Content: Scientific Publishing ( )  IYLIM – Economics of Publishing and the Future of Scholarly Communication ( )  DEST – Changing Research Practices in the Digital Information and Communication Environment ( ) Centre for Strategic Economic Studies

Scholarly Communication in a Knowledge-Based Economy John Houghton Centre for Strategic Economic Studies Victoria University, Melbourne