Page:Open access and the humanities - contexts, controversies and the future.pdf/94

 On the other of these two problems, that of ﬁnding the optimum balance point between level of contribution and number of institutions, arXiv has chosen to focus on the top 200 institutions worldwide because ‘they account for about 75% of institutionally identiﬁable downloads’.73 This has the substantial advantage of yielding a smaller number of (wealthier) institutions to target but, conversely, means that it is necessary to ask for a larger amount from each while also ensuring that the commodity perk that is exclusive (membership of the arXiv governance board) is primarily restricted to these already-prestigious (and wealthy) institutions.



How, then, can a transition to OA be affordable for the humanities? The only honest answer is that nobody can be certain that it is. This fact should always be accompanied, however, by the additional knowledge that at the moment it is possible to pay, globally, for all the research that is published. This means that, in theory, OA must be affordable, even in a switched, supply-side gold economy. The most likely short-term answer to this question, however, is that the currently available research shows that the green route poses no immediate danger to subscriptions for journals but allows open access. Books work differently and are covered below. In the longer term, for journals, two possibilities present themselves. The ﬁrst is a market for APCs where researchers have developed price sensitivity, perhaps through funder encouragement. The second is a system of collective funding wherein many libraries collaborate to make possible an infrastructure to support publication that does not require a direct author-for-article/ author-for-book payment. Such models can never ignore the costs of scholarly publication and should not underestimate the labour required. However, the current models cannot afford the opportunity costs of being left behind as open access gains increasing traction.

At present, the economic challenges of the shifts to both gold and green open access are ampliﬁed by the fact that there is no uniﬁed global response, despite the international and collaborative nature of