A socio-economic assessment of Open Access movement in scientific publishing: The OpenAIRE infrastructure

Abstract

Commercial journals impose high prices in scientific publishing causing problems to the scientific community. Open Access initiatives, corresponding to unrestricted online access to peer-reviewed scholarly research are developed around the world and supported by research organizations and institutions. European Commission has launched in August 2008 the OpenAIRE (Open Access Infrastructure for Research in Europe) project, supporting Open Access in scientific information and research output. A study was commissioned in order to assess the economic sustainability of the OpenAIRE project. The used the framework of Cost-Benefit Analysis in order to evaluate and compare the costs and benefits of OpenAIRE services, and provide explicit recommendations on the project‘s economic efficiency and sustainable existence. OpenAIRE costs are explicitly documented in the market. OpenAIRE benefits are shadow, because they are not traded in any explicit market. As such these benefits can only be retrieved via the use of non-market valuation econometric methods. In the study the ‗Choice Experiment‘ non-market valuation method was adopted, which is based on elicitation of individual stakeholders‘ stated preferences and their aggregation over their relevant populations, which gives the Total Economic Value (TEV) generated by OpenAIRE. It has been estimated that the required cost for the OpenAIRE‘s 15-year operation is very small with respect to the corresponding benefits. Specifically, the average OpenAIRE stakeholder is WTP 779.34 €/institution/year for the basic services provided by OpenAIRE. The net social benefits for the basic services for 15 years add up to 5,724,000 €. Finally, the potential R&D effect from research suggests even larger benefits in the long run with a Benefit/Cost ratio of 115.58 for 100 years. This dissertation presents the choice experiment method that was applied for the purpose of the OpenAIRE‘s sustainability study and contributes to the literature on monetary valuation of the benefits and costs of Open Access to scientific knowledge.