PEER

Client: STM - Associazione Europea Editori Scientifici
Scientific supervisor: Paola Dubini
Research team: Maria Rita Micheli, Paola Galimberti, Elena Giglia

This project refers to an empirical research on the PEER database as part of the broader effort of PEER to understand under which conditions it is feasible to develop a European based large scale deposit of scholarly publications. More specifically this proposal addresses the issue of the cost of deposit which is increasingly becoming the object of a lively debate among scholars from different disciplines publishers librarians and other actors involved in the research publication and diffusion process. The research questions are: - What are the costs associated to the deposit of stage 2 articles? - Under which conditions are costs minimised? - What are the alternative activity configurations that can be envisaged in the best interest of the research community and collectivity at large? - Who bears the cost of deposit and who enjoys the benefits of a shared database of stage 2 papers under the different alternatives? The specificity of this project (and the risks associated with it) is that it takes a micro perspective in the sense that it determines costs starting from the analysis of real individual companies/institutions and not considering an average situation. Based on the comparison of business models and cost structures of different players it assesses cost ranges for deposit under different scenarios taking PEER as a reference. The proposed methodology is a combination of literature analysis desk analysis of PEER available statistics questionnaire sent to participating stakeholders to PEER aimed at determining the cost of filling an open access repository of stage two articles i.e. the authors' final manuscripts already accepted for publication by a journal and incorporating all changes requested during the peer review process. The empirical base of analysis will be the PEER database.