Economic and Social Impacts of Open Access (Easi-OA)

A research program to support the integration of existing work and provide a coordinating focus for new research on the economic and social impacts of open access.

The Easi-OA research program emerged from a meeting held in New York in March 2006, which was convened by SPARC Europe with the support of the Open Society Institute. The research program will explore the costs and benefits of various scholarly communication models, and examine the distribution of those costs and benefits throughout the scholarly communication system. The core focus will be on exploring and measuring the impacts of open access.

The program is inclusive, bringing together detailed 'bottom-up' work on scoping the entire scholarly communication system, 'top-down' work on broad economic impacts, and a range of work on 'vertical slices' that explores the specific impacts in particular disciplines or fields of research, industries and countries.
 

Report from the New York meeting and detailed program outline available for download

• Easi-OA Program Outline
• Report from the New York Meeting

Supporting documents

• Economic Impacts of Enhanced Access to Research Findings (Houghton & Sheehan)
• Research Communication Costs in Australia, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits (Houghton, Steele & Sheehan)
• Discussion of a "Bottom-up" Approach to Examining Economic Impacts of Open Access (King)

Research reports

• Report to the Australian Department of Education, Science and Training, Canberra (September 2006)
  Research Communication Costs in Australia, Emerging Opportunities and Benefits (Houghton, Steele & Sheehan)

Contact

John Houghton
Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University
Phone: +61 (0) 2 6282 1981 Mobile: +61 (0) 409 239 109
E-mail: john.houghton@pobox.com
Web: www.cfses.com

Compiled by John Houghton (December 2008)