Economic efficiency of open content

JISC, a committee, funded by Higher Education bodies to support "to provide world-class leadership in the innovative use of of ICT to support education and research" has evaluated different publishing models, focusing, particularly, on the traditional subsrciption or toll access publishing, which involves reader charges and use restrictions, and an open access self-archiving where academic authors post their work in online repositories, making it free available to all Internet users. 

The outcome comes is that significant savings can be achieved, up to 172 million pound or 3 % from overall publishing activities. 

This is not a surprise and it is already significant. More saving is expected. We are at the beginning of a long way. Penetration of the ICT model makes the old model more and more redundant. 

I have no doubts than strategic decision-making for Kazakhstan on favor of open publishing will have a lot of benefits, even considering, that the outcomes of these decision might be appreciated only in 5 - 10 years. As usually, there is no opposition, but lack of knowledge between decision-makers.