Implicaciones económicas de los modelos alternativos de publicación (Elena López de la Fuente)

El Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) acaba de publicar un
informe sobre las implicaciones económicas de los modelos alternativos
de publicación de la literatura académica frente a los tradicionales
basados en las suscripciones en la educación superior en el Reino Unido.
Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing.
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/publications/rpteconomicoapublishing.pdf 
Aims and approach
Debate on the economics of scholarly publishing and alternative
publishing models has focused almost entirely on costs. And yet,
from an economic perspective, the aim is to have the most 
cost-effective system, not (necessarily) the cheapest, and however
much one studies costs one cannot know which is the most
cost-effective system until one examines both
costs and benefits.
Hence, the aim of this project was to examine the costs and
benefits of three alternative models for scholarly publishing
(i.e. subscription publishing, open access publishing and
selfarchiving). In so doing, it seeks to inform policy discussion
and help stakeholders understand the institutional, budgetary
and wider economic implications.
The project involved two major phases:
• Phase I: Identification of costs and benefits – sought to
describe the three models of scholarly publishing, identify
all the dimensions of cost and benefit for each of the models,
and examine which of the main players in the scholarly
communication system would be affected and how they would
be affected; and
• Phase II: Quantification of costs and benefits – sought, where
possible, to quantify the costs and benefits identified; identify
and where possible quantify the cost and benefit implications
for each of the main players in the scholarly communication
system; and, where possible, compare the costs and benefits
of the three models.
While wide-ranging in scope, an important focus for the work was
the implications of the three publishing models for UK higher
education and for scholarly journal and book publishing –although
other forms of publication and other stakeholders are included in 
the analysis.

Elena López de la Fuente