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The author-pays model (open access publishing funded through author charges) is dependent on authors having access to financial support at the time their research papers are accepted. We conducted an author survey to determine the availability of external funding for publication charges at different points in the research process. Of the 377/524 (72%) who responded, 62% (233/377) received external funding to support their study, but with notable differences between journals. Only 25% (95/377) could withdraw funds from a grant at the time of paper acceptance. The grant was closed at this time for almost half (105/233.45%) of those who were externally funded. Non-externally funded research was largely supported through departmental resources (56%, 80/144) or carrying out research in own time (63%, 91/144). To conclude, a large proportion of published research is not externally funded, and many funded researchers do not have access to financial support at the time their paper is accepted for publication. INSET: Box 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research has suggested that providing free and discounted access to the scientific literature to researchers in low-income countries increases article production and citation. Using traditional bibliometric indicators for institutions in sub-Saharan Africa, we analyze whether institutional access to TEEAL (a digital collection of journal articles in agriculture and allied subjects) increases: (i) article production; (ii) reference length; and (iii) number of citations to journals included in the TEEAL collection. Our analysis is based on nearly 20,000 articles - containing half a million references - published between 1988 and 2009 at 70 institutions in 11 African countries. We report that access to TEEAL does not appear to result in higher article production, although it does lead to longer reference lists (an additional 2.6 references per paper) and a greater frequency of citations to TEEAL journals (an additional 0.4 references per paper), compared to non-subscribing institutions. We discuss how traditional bibliometric indicators may not provide a full picture of the effectiveness of free and discounted literature programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article processing charge (APC) is currently the primary method of funding professionally published open access (OA) peer-reviewed journals. The pricing principles of 77 OA publishers publishing over 1,000 journals using APCs were studied and classified. The most commonly used pricing method is a single fixed fee, which can either be the same for all of a publisher's journals or individually determined for each journal. Fees are usually only levied for publication of accepted papers, but there are some journals that also charge submission fees. Instead of fixed prices, many publishers charge by the page or have multi-tiered fees depending on the length of articles. The country of origin of the author can also influence the pricing, in order to facilitate publishing for authors from developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the extent to which higher education institutions in the UK have set up central funds and similar institutionally co-ordinated approaches to the payment of open access article-processing charges. It presents data demonstrating that central funds have only been set up by a minority of institutions and that the number of institutions has not changed significantly between 2009 and 2011. It then explores the barriers to the establishment of such funds and discusses recent developments that might lower these barriers. Finally, it provides a case study of the development of the central fund at the University of Nottingham in the UK and considers the sustainability of such an approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a study - overseen by representatives of the publishing, library, and research funder communities in the UK - investigating the drivers, costs, and benefits of potential ways to increase access to scholarly journals. It identifies five different but realistic scenarios for moving towards that end over the next five years, including gold and green open access, moves towards national licensing, publisher-led delayed open access, and transactional models. It then compares and evaluates the benefits as well as the costs and risks for the UK. The scenarios, and the modelling on which they are based, amount to a benefit-cost analysis to help in appraising policy options. Our conclusion is that policymakers should encourage the use of existing subject and institutional repositories, but avoid pushing for reductions in embargo periods, which might put at risk the sustainability of the underlying scholarly publishing system. They should also promote and facilitate a transition to gold open access, while seeking to ensure that the average level of publication fees does not exceed c.?2.000; that the rate in the UK of open access publication is broadly in step with the rest of the world; and that total payments to publishers from UK universities do not rise as a consequence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]