Argument: Openness benefits research and the economy

Open access can be immensely beneficial for research. It increases the speed of access to publications and opens research up to a wider audience. [1] Some of the most important research has been made much more accessible due to open access. The Human Genome Project would have been an immense success either way but it is doubtful that its economic impact of $796billion would have been realised without open access.

The rest of the economy benefits too. It has been estimated that switching to open access would generate £100million of economic activity in the United Kingdom as a result of reduced research costs for business and shorter development as a result of being able to access a much broader range of research. [2]

[1] Anon., “Open access research advantages”, University of Leicester, http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/find/lra/openaccess/advantages

[2] Carr, Dave, and Kiley, Robert, “Open access to science helps us all”, New Statesman, 13 April 2012. http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/economics/2012/04/open-access-science-helps-us-all

Candidate 1: "Most students most of the time stick to the core areas of their course and thus are not likely to encounter difficulties with finding the relevant information. For those who do require resources that the university library does not have access to they can use interlibrary loan for a small fee to cover the cost of sending the book or article between universities. [1] The universities in most countries can therefore effectively split the cost of access by specialising in certain subjects which limits the number of journals they need to buy while making the resources available to their students if they really need them.

[1] Anon., “Inter-library loans” Birkbeck University of London. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/about/how/ill/illguide Within the UK Cambridge charges £3 to £6, http://www.bbk.ac.uk/lib/about/how/ill/illguide in Europe the University of Vienna charges €2 http://bibliothek.univie.ac.at/english/interlibrary_loans.html while the United States is higher with Yale charging between $20-30 http://www.library.yale.edu/ill/"
Candidate 2: "Public funding does not mean that everything should be free and open to use by the public. We do not expect to be allowed to use buildings that are built as government offices as if they were our own. The government builds large amounts of infrastructure such as airports and railways but we don’t expect to be able to use them for free."
Candidate 3: "Making these academic materials available to the general public does not mean they are useful to anyone. Many of the materials universities produce are not useful unless the reader has attended the relevant lectures. Rather than simply putting those lectures that are recorded and course handbooks online what is needed to open up education is systematically designed online courses that are available to all. Unfortunately what this provides will be a profusion of often overlapping and contradictory materials with little guidance for how to navigate through them for those who are not involved in the course in question."
Candidate 4: "Open access makes little difference to research. If an academic needs to use an article they don’t have access to they can pay for it and gain access quickly and efficiently.

The benefits to the economy may also be overstated; we don’t know how much benefit it will create. But we do know it would be badly damaging to the academic publishing industry. We also know there are risks with putting everything out in the open as economies that are currently research leaders will be handing out their advances for free. There is an immense amount of stealing of intellectual property, up to $400 billion a year, so research is obviously considered to be economically worth something. [1] With open access the proposal is instead to make everything available for free for others to take as and when they wish.

[1] Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, “Backgrounder on the Rogers-Ruppersberger Cybersecurity Bill”, U.S. House of Representatives, http://intelligence.house.gov/backgrounder-rogers-ruppersberger-cybersecurity-bill"

Open access makes little difference to research. If an academic needs to use an article they don’t have access to they can pay for it and gain access quickly and efficiently.

The benefits to the economy may also be overstated; we don’t know how much benefit it will create. But we do know it would be badly damaging to the academic publishing industry. We also know there are risks with putting everything out in the open as economies that are currently research leaders will be handing out their advances for free. There is an immense amount of stealing of intellectual property, up to $400 billion a year, so research is obviously considered to be economically worth something. [1] With open access the proposal is instead to make everything available for free for others to take as and when they wish.

[1] Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, “Backgrounder on the Rogers-Ruppersberger Cybersecurity Bill”, U.S. House of Representatives, http://intelligence.house.gov/backgrounder-rogers-ruppersberger-cybersecurity-bill
