NEW MODELS FOR OPEN ACCESS RESEARCH Christian Năsulea 1 , Marta Christina Suciu 2 , Diana Florentina Spînu 2 , Stelian Mihai Mic 1 1 University of Bucharest (ROMANIA) 2 Bucharest University of Economic Studies (ROMANIA) Abstract Research, development and innovation play a fundamental role in the economic development of modern day societies. Access to research, inventions, and discoveries, shapes science, the economy, and humanity at large in a very important way. Within this paper we debate the evolution of the academic publishing model over the past 70 years in order to understand what has lead to the status quo. Access to a very large part of all new and past research is controlled by a relatively small number of publishers, acting under an obsolete model, that ultimately leads to large increases in the cost of knowledge. Despite the fact that the accelerated advances in technology have greatly decreased, and continue to decrease, the costs of information distribution, yet the market price of access to knowledge has increased constantly. Open access alternatives to the established publishing system are being developed everywhere. We will also look at the incentive structure and the legal aspects related to the current models associated to research generation and access to research. By analysing the status quo and the legal framework through the lens of economic efficiency and effectiveness we will identify the most important components of a research access model and we will describe some possible forms of new models for open access research. Keywords: Open access, academic publishing, research, science, innovation. 1 INTRODUCTION The current academic research publishing system is divided between open access and pay-for-access publishers contributing to the extremely unequal distribution to the scientific world of around 1.5 million new articles each year, in addition to similarly unequal access to well over 50 million articles estimated to have been written since 1665 [1]. Although more and more scientists are speaking out in favour of the open access model, and against the established paywall model of the large publishers, large academic publishers still control the majority of science journals, and an even greater majority of high impact-factor journals. This level of control over the research distribution system is even harder to understand when we consider the fact that large academic publishers do not pay authors for their work, do not pay reviewers for checking the science papers, and sell access to the results back to the scientists at very high prices. As reported by Deutsche Bank in 2005 in one of their annual Global Equity Research Reports the academic publishing system is a “bizarre triple-pay system in which the state funds most research, pays the salaries of most of those checking the quality of research, and then buys most of the published product” [2]. Given all the above and the large-scale availability of open access solutions, correlated with the low cost of these solutions, one would have expected the paywall system to start losing far more popularity, a lot faster, and a lot sooner among the research community. Yet, there is little evidence to support the idea that a truly significant shift from paywall to open-access is to be expected in the foreseeable future, as outlined by analyses in both academic journals [3] and the mainstream media [4]. The success of any existing or new models for open access research will require an understanding of the market, the incentives, the constraints, and the legal framework underpinning the scientific and academic publishing world. Before we can imagine any new models we must understand how current ones work, as well as the functioning of the larger systems that they are part of. Any attempt to apply the principles of economic efficiency to these models and systems will also require a good understanding of the real-life systemic complexities of research publishing and distribution, if these models are ever to be practical and not just theoretical. Proceedings of ICERI2017 Conference 16th-18th November 2017, Seville, Spain ISBN: 978-84-697-6957-7 8319