For Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands free access to scholarly materials could offer significant benefits not only to research and higher education but also to society as a whole. This has been calculated by Australian economist Professor John Houghton in studies which have taken place in these three countries on the costs and benefits of scholarly communication. He has now summarised these findings in a report commissioned by Knowledge Exchange, which is a partnership of the IT bodies from Denmark (DEFF), the United Kingdom (JISC), the Netherlands (SURFfoundation) and Germany (DFG). ...

Adopting this model could lead to annual savings of around EUR 70 million in Denmark, EUR 133 million in The Netherlands and EUR 480 in the UK. The report concludes that the advantages would not just be in the long term; in the transitional phase too, more open access to research results would have positive effects. In this case the benefits would also outweigh the costs. ...