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 takes account of the latest estimates of the numbers of articles published by UK authors and worldwide in 2010: 123,594 and 1,935,954 respectively. The starting point for the analysis presented in a series of tables in Annex E is that APCs are set at a level—an average of c £1,450—similar to that currently being paid by the Wellcome Trust. It is important to stress that the adoption of such a starting point does not amount to a recommendation; rather, it is simply a point from which the analysis of possible scenarios can begin.

7.15. The comparisons in the tables start also from the same assumption used in the ‘gold’ open access scenario in the Open Road report: that c23.3% of all articles published annually across the world are published under gold open access terms, and that all countries adopt publication of research in open access journals at the same rate. Two further limitations to the modelling should be noted.


 * i. The model assumes that the costs of subscriptions will fall in proportion to the increase in the number of articles published open access; it is likely, however, that during the transition to open access, universities and other organisations will maintain subscriptions even as their expenditure on APCs rises. This will occur especially if a significant proportion of open access articles are published in hybrid journals, where much of the content will remain accessible only to subscribers.


 * ii. The model is not dynamic; it compares costs against the starting point set in relation to funding and the numbers of articles produced in 2010, and does not seek to model changes over time (it takes no account, therefore, of the annual rise in the number of articles produced worldwide each year, currently running at between 3% and 4%).

7.16. While bearing in mind all the points outlined above, it is important to note how the modelling indicates that, at the level of APCs currently being paid by the Wellcome Trust, a significant shift to open access journals could be cost-neutral for the HE sector as a whole—although not necessarily for individual institutions—in the UK. For the modelling indicates that if open access publishing funded by APCs were to cover up to a quarter of the total of articles published each year in the UK and worldwide, the costs to the HE sector in the UK would be minimal, and that there would be cost savings in other sectors of c£5m a year, so long as the average level of APCs were to remain at c£1,450 or lower, and the rest of the world was not too far behind the UK in take-up. We consider some other scenarios below.

7.17. Savings to the HE and other sectors, of course, would be achieved in the main through reduced revenues to publishers, including learned societies. As we have noted earlier, there may be upward pressure on prices as open access becomes more widespread among prestigious journals with high rejection rates and thus higher costs. But market competition may tend to counteract such pressure, and