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 have to pay for access to a significant proportion of articles published by overseas authors. In broad terms, if just under a quarter of UK-authored articles were to be published open access, but only 5% of articles in the rest of the world, the HE sector in the UK would face additional costs of c£17m a year, and organisations in other sectors which produce research articles would also face additional costs, amounting to c£3.5m.


 * iv. If UK institutions were to have to pay the full APC for only some of the articles produced by UK authors in collaboration with researchers in other countries, the costs to the HE sector could fall significantly. It is estimated that of all the articles published with a researcher from the UK listed among the authors, around 65% have someone from the UK listed as the corresponding author (which may serve as a proxy for the lead author). Reducing by 15% the proportion of all UK-authored articles for which a UK body should pay an APC (that is, for around a third of the articles where there is also an author from overseas), would reduce costs to the HE sector by nearly £4m a year as compared to the case from which our analysis starts.

7.21. It will be clear from this analysis that the costs to universities of a significant acceleration in the transition to publishing in open access or hybrid journals depend critically on assumptions on four factors:


 * i. the average level of APCs;


 * ii. the extent to which the UK is ahead of the rest of the world in adopting open access publishing;


 * iii. the number and proportion of articles with overseas as well as UK authors for which UK institutions would be required to pay an APC; and


 * iv. the extent to which during the transition to open access, universities and other organisations are able to reduce their expenditure on subscriptions even as their expenditure on APCs rises (a factor which is not covered in the modelling).

7.22. Under optimistic assumptions about levels of take-up and payment of APCs overseas, where the pace of change in the UK is matched in the rest of the world, and a proportion of the costs of APCs for articles co-authored with researchers in other countries is offset by funders and institutions in those countries, the costs to the HE sector of moving to open access publishing for 50% or more of research articles would at worst be minimal. There could even be cash savings for the HE sector, again so long as the average level of APCs is £1450 or lower. And our modelling suggests that even with less optimistic assumptions, the cost savings to organisations in other sectors would be substantial. The essential risk borne by the