The Socioeconomic Effects of Public Sector Information on Digital Networks Toward a Better Understanding of Different Access and Reuse Policies: Workshop Summary (2009) / Chapter Skim
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13. Exploring the Impacts of Enhanced Access to Publicly Funded Research
13. Exploring the Impacts of Enhanced Access to Publicly Funded Research
Pages 51-60
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From page 51... ...
on the costs of research communication, emerging opportunities, and benefits.2 The aims of the project were to explore and, where possible, to quantify the costs associated with research communication, focusing mainly on scientific publishing but also, to a lesser extent, on scientific data. The study also explored the potential benefits of enhanced access to research findings and tried to compare the costs and benefits of alternative access systems.
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From page 52... ...
By summing the costs for all actors, we calculated that writing all those journal articles counted in the Higher Education Research Data Collection cost the Australian National University approximately A$50 million in 2005. In the second part of the study, we explored the potential benefits of enhanced access to research findings.
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From page 53... ...
Ultimately, having informed citizens and informed consumers should increase the overall economic welfare of the country. With such a wide range of potential benefits, the task of quantifying the impact of enhanced access is enormous, and there is no single definitive approach to the problem.
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From page 54... ...
It is possible to express some of these costs and impacts as benefit-cost ratios. For example, focusing on a limited range of costs, it is possible to compare the estimated incremental cost of open-access institutional repositories in higher education with the potential incremental benefits from enhanced access to higher education research, assuming that everything else remains the same.
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From page 55... ...
They are simply another form of scientific observation. Consequently, it may be possible to apply the rates of return applicable to observational sciences to various forms of public sector information and to produce preliminary estimates of returns to public sector information.
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From page 56... ...
I also should point out there is one exception to the public domain exclusion for federal government information from the Copyright Act, and that is in the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Standard Reference Data Center has a legislative exemption from the exclusion and can copyright its standard reference data publications, and that may be the only exception to that in the federal government.
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From page 57... ...
A final comment from a professional point of view: I do not think the data withdrawal approach is a good one because I just think that there are ex post facto questions, and there are huge substitution possibilities among sources of data. I think it is much better to try to estimate what the marginal benefit is of additional data or new data, if you can get some handle on that.
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From page 58... ...
It makes no sense for anybody to sell information priced at marginal cost because it has no marginal cost, but it does make sense to sell services. In the public sector debate, we speak about public sector information holders who sell information to reusers under certain licensing terms, and this is considered all right because we see it as acceptable to sell information to the people who are going to provide services.
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From page 59... ...
In a previous life I worked for an industry association that handled PSI questions, and I saw there at least two examples of very negative cases that will probably end up in court when the PSI Directive has been implemented in Sweden, and we will see if they end up in the European Court of Justice. It is clearly a risk that this initially very positive contact becomes harsher or more problematic when the depth of access requested by private companies and industries increases.
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From page 60... ...
60 SOCIOECONOMIC EFFECTS OF PSI ON DIGITAL NETWORKS Secondly, I think the competition authorities in various EU countries may have a great deal of ability to unlock some of these problems for all of us. It only takes one or two decisions and all of a sudden the whole of Europe will have to take an interest in this issue.
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