Papiers De Recherche Working Papers

The mean price of scholarly journals is now three times higher than it was in the mid-1980s. In the meantime, the development of Internet and of informal exchanges between researchers progressively led to the Open Access Initiative which aims at freely disseminating scientific publications. This article introduces to the consequences of this evolution and presents the path toward a new economic model of scholarly publications. "If I have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants." The famous statement of Sir Isaac Newton demonstrates that the progress of science relies on the dissemination of discoveries and scientific knowledge. Even though scientific progress is not strictly cumulative (Kuhn, 1970) information sharing is the heart of this progress. Nowadays, scientific knowledge is mainly spread through scholarly journals, that is, highly specialized journals where quality controls and certifications are achieved through peer-review. The first section of this article will present the specificity of the current economic model of scientific publications. The second section will introduce to the open access movement and to its emerging economic model. The third section will point out the potential contribution of Open Access to developing countries. THE ECONOMIC MODEL OF SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS The growing complexity of modern science induces a growing need of knowledge dissemination media. The number of academic journals is very difficult to estimate, but according to the "Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory" (http://www.ulrichsweb.com) there were about 164,000 scientific periodicals in 2001 in all disciplines (see Figure 1). The largest publishers like Elsevier-Reed, Blackwell or Wiley own most of these journals. Over the last twenty years, commercial firms -especially the largest oneshave raised prices at a rate which cannot be justified by cost or quality increase (McCabe, 2000). The evolution of the median cost of serials is summarized in Table 1; it is now three times higher than it was in the mid eighties. Former president of the University of California recently stated: "University librarians are now being forced to work with faculty members to choose more of the publications they can do without." (Atkinson, 2003, p.1, original emphasis). As a consequence, Figure 2 shows that, in the USA, acquisition expenditures have tremendously grown and that part of the budgets had to be reallocated from monographs to journals. The rise of journals prices has a multiple origin, one of the most important being provisions to invest in electronic publications (Chartron & Salaun, 2000). Paradoxically, electronic publiFigure 1. Number of periodicals published worldwide (’000s) 1998-2001. (Source: Ulrich’s International Periodicals Directory) cation, which should reduce costs, is one cause of cost increase. These provisions are nevertheless insufficient to explain the current prices. Elsevier-Reed gross-profit margin is estimated 32% (Wellen, 2004). Such "Microsoft like" margins are very unusual and demonstrate the inefficiency of the scientific publication market. There are four main reasons to this inefficiency: • Researchers publish to popularize their works and to improve peers recognition (which has a great impact on their careers). They are "giveaway authors" (Harnad, 2001) and do not receive any royalties or fees. Furthermore, they do not have to pay to access to scientific information since all the expenses are paid by academic libraries. Authors are then not concerned with the price of journals, they only consider the reputation and the citation impact of the journals they publish in. • The demand is price-inelastic (that is prices have few impact on the volume of the demand) since prices are not important for researchers and journals are not easily substitutable. • Libraries evolve on a commercial market but do not have any commercial approach. They buy up to their budget limit and not according to any price equilibrium. 1 ha l-0 04 51 85 2, v er si on 1 1 Fe b 20 10 2 OPEN ACCESS: TOWARD A NEW ECONOMIC MODEL OF SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS Table 1 Evolution of the Median Value of Serial Unit Cost, 19862003. (Source: Association of Research Libraries) Year Serial Unit Cost US$ Annual percentage changes Cumulative percentage changes