Abstract

The JISC commissioned this study to model the costs and benefits of changing scholarly communication practices within UK HEIs (Higher Education Institutions). In particular, the study has been designed to achieve two key goals: To provide information to institutional managers about the costs and benefits of changing scholarly communication practices, with a special focus on Open Access to research papers To develop a methodology using case studies based on different types of higher education institution in the UK and employing real data and contextual information provided by these institutions. The intent was to produce a methodology that can be used by research-based institutions to model the economic effects of different scenarios in their own case. The work does two things in terms of modelling: it identifies the costs and benefits of different scholarly communication scenarios; and it quantifies them, that is, it attaches actual values to cost elements in the processes involved and measures what economic outcomes emerge from modelling various scenarios.