London Higher and SPARC Europe have commissioned a new report on the cost to UK research organisations of implementing funder open access policies. The report 'Counting the Costs of Open Access' highlights the compliance burden associated with the move to open access publication of research articles, and for the first time identifies the administrative cost of making articles open access through the 'gold' and 'green' routes.
The report is based on a national survey of UK research organisations conducted in September 2014. According to the report, achieving compliance with Research Council UK's open access Policy cost at least £9.2m in 2013/14 – with a further £11m or more spent on article processing charges (APCs). The time spent on increasing open access to research within UK research organisations in 2013/14 is equivalent to more than 110 full-time equivalent staff members. Further, the report notes that the burden of compliance falls disproportionally on smaller institutions, who receive minimal grant funding. The cost of meeting the deposit requirements for the UK's post-2014 Research Excellence Framework is estimated at £4-5m.
Additionally, the report reveals that while making an article open access through payment of an APC (the 'gold' route) takes 2 hours or more, at a cost of £81, making an article open access through self-archiving in an institutional repository (the 'green' route) takes just over 45 minutes, at a cost of £33.
The findings are made available under a CC-BY licence.
