Opening Up Open Access: Investigating Alternate Funding Models to Stimulate Open Access Publishing
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Open access, or the publishing practice of making a printed work available to anyone, embodies the idea that the world is better off when we freely share knowledge. As it stands, only a small percentage of academic articles are published under such a license, meaning that new, emerging, and exciting research is often inaccessible to many who might benefit from it. This is, in part, due to the cost of publishing; those journals that do offer open access as an option must shift the cost of lost revenue to the authors. As a result, the author usually must spend thousands of dollars of their grant money to make an article open access. In this thesis, I explore the question: is it economically feasible for publishers to make a revenue-neutral move to open access by realigning funding pathways? I propose a new model which shifts the monetary burden of open access from publishers and authors to funding agencies through the direct support of article publishing. This thesis shows how such a model can be revenue-neutral for a journal moving from closed subscription to open access. The results demonstrate that funding agencies are already involved in sponsoring research articles, and that a revenue-neutral shift is possible due both to a reduction in transaction costs and the proposed redistribution of publishing costs across several stakeholders. The data collected for the purpose of this thesis from publicly available sources indicates which groups of agencies play large roles in funding research, and addresses various concerns raised about the proposed system. My analysis shows that a revenue-neutral move from subscriptions to open access system is feasible, while pointing to potential cost savings and advantages for each stakeholder in the academic publishing industry.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | May 2017 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Rusk, Matthew |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Willinsky, John |
Subjects
| Subject | Science Technology and Society |
|---|---|
| Subject | Open Access Publishing |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license (CC BY).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Rusk, Matthew. (2017). Opening Up Open Access: Investigating Alternate Funding Models to Stimulate Open Access Publishing. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/nc651kp4943
Collection
Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses
View other items in this collection in SearchWorksContact information
- Contact
- matt.j.rusk@gmail.com
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