CAPÍTULO 3: MODELIZACIÓN NUMÉRICA
3.11 FLUJO DE CALOR HACIA LA PIEZA DEBIDO A LA ACCIÓN DE LOS
3.11.3 Determinación del flujo de calor hacia el material
Global publication and distribution costs and funding
Figure 5.6 shows that reductions in the variable costs contribute the largest share of the total potential cost saving to the global publishing industry of around £273m with a shift to author-side payment. This is largely due to an estimated decrease in variable publishing cost of £385m related to a cut in sales administration (£ 267m) and online user management cost (£ 130m).67 This cost
saving is partly offset by an increase in direct fixed cost (per article) due to the management of payment contracts with authors.68 As noted above, these changes are in addition to the changes
arising from a move to e-only publication.
67 The total savings in sales administration and online user management of £ 397m are slightly offset by additional variable costs for
production/print, management/inventory and delivery/fulfilment which are estimated to increase by £ 12m. This is related to a marginal change in the article allocation through a move to author-side payment journals (Scenario 2).
68 Please see the model assumption book for details on activity cost assumptions. With a move toward author-side payment journals,
publishers’ cost to administer author-side payments was uplifted by an extra £30 per article to account for this fundamental change in the business model of publishing. Also, online user management costs are only reduced by 50% since we assume that under this scenario, publishers will still incur some cost for user registration and management, even if access to journals is free. Note that the model assumption does not include any ‘non-cash’ cost potentially incurred by authors in the process of handling payments for article publication.
Activities, costs and funding flows in the scholarly communications system in the UK
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Figure 5.6: Additional differences in global publication and distribution cost between e-only publication (Scenario 1) and Scenario 2
-385 16 26 -273 0 71 71 -500 -400 -300 -200 -100 0 100 Non-cash peer review Direct fixed cost
First copy cost Variable cost Indirect cost Surplus Total cost
£
m
ill
io
n
Figure 5.7 shows the changes in funding shares arising from the modelled move towards an author- side payment model. It indicates a shift in the burden of funding of the global scholarly
communication system from academic and other libraries, and corporate subscribers, to academic authors (and/or their employing institutions, or their funders).
Academic libraries are net beneficiaries, with their total subscription expenditures decreasing by almost £2.91bn at a global level.
However, since academic libraries are part of the academic and research institutions that need to fund ‘author-side payment’ costs, these savings are expected to be largely offset. Assuming that around 90% of articles are published by academic researchers, their proportion of the increase in author-side payments would be about £2.92bn. As a result, the model suggests that academic institutions at a global level would need to fund an additional £10m from the move to author-side payment69.
Costs and benefits are unevenly distributed across institutions: research-intensive institutions would pay more in publication fees than they currently do for library subscriptions, while institutions where research constitutes a lower proportion of activity and expenditure would tend to see reductions in expenditure.
The main beneficiaries of this move are thus ‘other subscribers’, to the extent that they are ‘consumers’ of published research outputs. They benefit by a cost reduction in subscription expenditures of £592m. If the remaining share of articles (10%) is assumed to be published by these other subscriber, the net benefit would fall to £267m.69
If we assumed that all articles were published by academic researchers, then academic / research institutions would in total bear a cost increase of £333m.
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What is interesting about the results summarised in Figure 5.7 is that, based on the assumptions in the model, the ‘loss of revenues’ from ‘other subscribers’ has been largely offset by the assumed variable cost savings resulting from a move to author-side payment. The additional funding from academic institutions would otherwise have increased further.70
Figure 5.7: Additional differences in global publication and distribution funding between e-only publication (Scenario 1) and Scenario 2
0 -2,913 -273 -5 -8 -592 3,246 -4,000 -3,000 -2,000 -1,000 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 Research funders (peer review) A cademic subscriptio ns
Other subscriptio ns A utho r-side payment
A dvertising M embership fees & individual subscriptio ns To tal £ m illio n
A discussion of the impact of UK libraries, including the impact on non-subscription price access costs is presented further below.
UK contribution to the global publication and distribution costs
Table 5.3(a) shows two of the measures of the UK’s contribution to the publication and distribution cost activities of the scholarly communications process (£6.4bn in the base case and £5.8bn in Scenario 2). The contribution of peer reviewers is not expected to change under this scenario. Table 5.3(b) shows how the supply and demand-side indicators change compared with the base case. Key points to note from Table 5.3(a) and (b) are that:
Table 5.3(a) shows an increase from 4.0% to 6.2% in the UK academic contribution to the costs of the global publication and distribution of articles. This reflects the fact that the current contribution (as a proportion of total costs) provided in the form of subscriptions from UK university libraries is less than the proportion of articles that originate from UK authors.
The total UK contribution under Scenario 2 - taking account of further funding sources fromremaining print subscriptions, author-side payments from non-academic researchers, and membership fees - would be 7% of the global cost of publication and distribution, as compared with 5.2% in the base case.
70 One further point to note is that this analysis does not take account of the subsidy currently provided to academics in developing
countries (through free or discounted access to academic journals). If this continued to be provided in an author-side payment model, the relative burden on academics would increase – in order to cover the cost of the publication of developing country academics.
Activities, costs and funding flows in the scholarly communications system in the UK
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Table 5.3(b) shows the implications of these changes for the ‘contribution measures’ presented in Section 4.4.3. It shows the supply indicator moving from a position in which UK is a ‘net beneficiary’ to being broadly in balance. The impact on the ‘demand side’ indicator is to increase the extent to which the UK is a ‘net contributor’ compared with its levels of readership.Table 5.3a: Change to UK contribution arising under Scenario 2
Measure
Base case
Scenario 2
UK Academic contribution of global total of funding
for publication/distribution
4.0% 6.2%
Total UK contribution of global total of funding
5.2%
7.0%
Table 5.3b: UK contribution to total global indicators (publication and distribution) costs