Important JASIST Simulation Study of Transition to OA

[Stevan Harnad]

Bernius, S., Hanauske, M., Dugall, B. and König, W. (2013), Exploring the
effects of a transition to open access: Insights from a simulation
study<http://www.is-frankfurt.de/publikationenNeu/ExploringtheEffectsofaTransiti4353.pdf>.
J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci.. doi: 10.1002/asi.22772

The Open Access (OA) movement, which postulates gratis and unrestricted
online access to publicly funded research findings, has significantly
gained momentum in recent years. The two ways of achieving OA are
self-archiving of scientific work by the authors (Green OA) and publishing
in OA journals (Gold OA). But there is still no consensus which model
should be supported in particular. The aim of this simulation study is to
discover mechanisms and predict developments that may lead to specific
outcomes of possible market transformation scenarios. It contributes to
theories related to OA by substantiating the argument of a citation
advantage of OA articles and by visualizing the mechanisms of a journal
system collapsing in the long-term due to the continuation of the serials
crisis. The practical contribution of this research stems from the
integration of all market players: Decisions regarding potential financial
support of OA models can be aligned with our findings, as well as the
decision of a publisher to migrate his/her journals to Gold OA. *Our
results indicate that for scholarly communication in general, a transition
to Green OA combined with a certain level of subscription-based publishing
and a migration of few top journals is the most beneficial development.*
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