The Economic Impacts of Open Science: A Rapid Evidence Assessment

Abstract

A common motivation for increasing open access to research findings and data is the potential to create economic benefits – but evidence is patchy and diverse. This study systematically reviewed the evidence on what kinds of economic impacts (positive and negative) open science can have, how these comes about, and how benefits could be maximized. Use of open science outputs often leaves no obvious trace, so most evidence of impacts is based on interviews, surveys, inference based on existing costs, and modelling approaches. There is indicative evidence that open access to findings/data can lead to savings in access costs, labour costs and transaction costs. There are examples of open science enabling new products, services, companies, research and collaborations. Modelling studies suggest higher returns to R&D if open access permits greater accessibility and efficiency of use of findings. Barriers include lack of skills capacity in search, interpretation and text mining, and lack of clarity around where benefits accrue. There are also contextual considerations around who benefits most from open science (e.g. sectors, small vs larger companies, types of dataset). Recommendations captured in the review include more research, monitoring and evaluation (including developing metrics), promoting benefits, capacity building and making outputs more audience-friendly.

Dynamics of Cumulative Advantage and Threats to Equity in Open Science - A Scoping Review

“…The following sections present our synthesis of this literature. Since the many potential benefits of Open Science have been well-argued elsewhere [43][44][45][46], our presentation here necessarily focusses in greater depth on those areas where Open Science implementation potentially endangers the aim of greater equity in science. This emphasis should not be interpreted as signalling that the authors believe that the negatives outweigh the positives.…”

“…Here, indicative evidence shows that Open Science might have a positive economic impact. A recent synthesis [45] summarises the literature to find that Open Science can help industry-uptake through (1) efficiency gains through easier access to publications [241][242][243][244] and data [245][246][247], as well as reduction of transaction costs via collaborative approaches [248,249] and lower labour costs or increasing productivity [242,[250][251][252], and (2) enabling new products, services or collaborative possibilities [253][254][255]. However, evidence points towards firms (particularly small and medium-sized enterprises) lacking necessary skills such as information literacy, to fully benefit from open resources [242,256,257].…”

Embedding Open Science in Reality

“…Policy makers and funders have largely bought into the fact that OS is good value for money yet the various analyses that have been undertaken are not that rigorous and maybe it is not worth pursuing much further given OS is largely accepted. A recent paper by Fell [11] looks at methodologies for assessing the economic impact which, unsurprisingly argues for further work on agreed metrics. Probably more effective is to see how OS impacts on open innovation [12].…”

Multiple Facets of Open: A Different View on Open Science

“…It might be advisable to take a look at the economic effects of Open Access and to shed light on several outstanding views. While Tennant et al [62] and Fell [63] concentrate on the societal and economic impacts of Open Access or rather Open Science, Eger and Scheufen [64] see it in a broader perspective. In an international survey with more than 10,000 respondents from 25 countries, the authors conclude that "... OA is more likely to be driven by the respondents' field of research than by their country of residence."…”