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 relatively modest additional cost of around £1m a year. The report suggests that the benefit-cost ratios would again be modest; but the benefits would nevertheless be real, especially for those NHS staff who need access to the latest research publications and who struggle at present with access to a limited amount of content on different platforms.

Other sectors

7.40. Outside the HE and NHS sectors, the provision of licensed access to significant numbers of journals is common only in large R&D-intensive companies. The survey and other evidence we have considered (Section 4), together with data on the number of ‘turnaways’ on publishers’ platforms (that is, the number of people who view the abstract of an article but then decline to purchase access to full text) indicate that PPV arrangements at current prices are not an adequate substitute for licensed access free at the point of use.

7.41. During the period of transition to publishing in open access and hybrid journals, extensions to licensed access for the benefit of individuals and organisations in the public, voluntary and business sectors in the UK, would bring significant benefits in increasing the flow of knowledge and thereby in stimulating growth and innovation.

7.42. There are many attractions to the idea of a national licence to provide online access to all journals for everyone in the UK, although some risks as well, which is probably why no major nation has implemented such a scheme. We have concluded that such a licence is unlikely to be practicable, and that the costs would probably be high. The only known example of such a national licence scheme is the Iceland Consortium for electronic subscriptions (hvar.is), which provides access to over 17,000 full-text journals through every computer in the country that connects to the internet through an Icelandic internet service provider. The agreement is made through an aggregator, not with primary publishers, with most of the content embargoed for a year after publication; and the model is unlikely to be scaleable for the UK.

7.43. Nor would it be straightforward to develop and implement licences that would cover large sectors of the UK economy and society: there would be considerable problems in defining different sectors and their boundaries; the risk of disputes as to which organisations fell within or outside the definitions; and the likelihood of leakage of content beyond the sectors covered by each licence. Nevertheless, in order to increase access for key groups of people and organisations who have an interest in research and its results, some extensions to current licensing arrangements would clearly be desirable, and could bring real benefits. We believe that there should be continuing discussions between publishers, representative bodies for key sectors, libraries and other organisations with relevant expertise