Other beneficiaries would be small liberal arts colleges, which focus on teaching, as would certain sections of industry that rely heavily on the published literature (i.e. the pharmaceutical industry), among others.

It may be more realistic to assume that the total costs of publishing would stay the same, only the costs would shift.

I don’t think that Houghton is arguing that OA is a “free lunch.” What is missing from the report, however, is a discussion on how the costs would shift and its policy implications.

Arguing that OA is cheaper than toll-access publishing does not mean that everyone will pay less money. It is clear that for some players, it will become a lot more expensive.

If you take a “system” view isn’t it possible that small countries will inherently be “net beneficiaries” from Open Access? Because the number of articles they consume significantly exceeds the number that they produce, they will obviously benefit from transition to Open Access. Take an extreme example: a country that produces just one manuscript will willingly make one Open Access fee payment in exchange for free access to the world’s scholarly literature! So Open Access will ALWAYS be economically attractive to small countries.

As you correctly point out Open Access will not necessarily change the economic fundamentals of manuscript publication. So where does this “free lunch” come from?

Richard.