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Open Research in the Humanities: The Future of Scholarly Communication

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Authors: Emma Gilby, Matthias Ammon, Rachel Leow and Sam Moore

This is the second of a series of blog posts, presenting the reflections of the Working Group on Open Research in the Humanities.  Read the opening post here. The working group aimed to reframe open research in a way that was more meaningful to humanities disciplines, and their work will inform the University of Cambridge approach to open research.  This post considers the future of scholarly communication from a humanities perspective. 

PILLAR ONE: THE FUTURE OF SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION 

This first pillar deals with ‘open access’ narrowly understood: the future of the publication landscape, and the question of the sustainability and viability of different publication models in an open access world.  

Opportunities 

The open access initiative in general values a wide range of contributions to academic life. The arts and humanities thrive on long-term, multi-scale, conversational, collaborative, interdisciplinary projects; all cultural work can be so defined. Any move towards research diversity therefore works in the favour of the arts and humanities.  

Open Research aims first at opening out ‘traditional’ research content, such as that published in journals and monographs. Thus it aims also to demystify the existing publication process. In general, it prioritizes the wide dissemination of public-facing research. Further, it allows us to envisage new forms of publication, such as the use of dynamic images and data visualisation as already undertaken in investigative journalism.1 Other examples of new Open Access formats include semi-public peer-to-peer review and the opportunity for readers to highlight passages and contribute to a crowd-sourced index of terms.2

Support required 

In the immediate and short term, A&H colleagues require institutional support to understand and get to grips with the current routes to open access within academic publishing, which present various advantages and challenges. For more detail see Plan S and the History Journal Landscape, A Royal Historical Society Guidance Paper https://royalhistsoc.org/policy/publication-open-access/plan-s-and-history-journals/ 

Current routes to OA in scholarly publishing include:  

  1. Paying directly for article or book processing charges levied by publishers. This is easy if one’s research falls among the very small percentage of A&H research that is funded by the research councils, who allow for such fees, but otherwise challenging.  
  1. Taking advantage of a ‘read and publish’ deal set up between a publisher and an institution. This is easy if one is at the right institution at the right time, but otherwise challenging. There is also confusion amongst colleagues about what happens when these time-limited, transitional deals expire: will publishers revert to simple processing charges (see above)? Or will all published material by then be fully OA (see below)?  
  1. The self-deposit in an OA institutional repository of a manuscript that is accepted for publication and peer reviewed but that has not been edited or typeset by the publisher in any way. This is easy with the right systems in place, but problematic because it neglects the import of the editing process in A&H research. Without undergoing this process, ‘accepted manuscripts’ are very vulnerable to errors, especially in the case of the very many scholars who regularly work in languages that are not their first, or in the case of early career scholars who are less familiar with critical processes and how to evidence them, or in the case of colleagues with various kinds of disabilities such as dyslexia. Other issues also abound with the deposit of manuscripts in repositories. In cases where scholars receive an acceptance that is subject to improvement, the final ‘date of acceptance’ is ambiguous for legal purposes. And in cases where the work in question uses copyrighted material, further legal issues emerge about when and how it may be possible to circulate this. In all these senses, then, many A&H colleagues simply dislike the thought of their ‘accepted manuscript’ circulating. In the case of institutional repositories, there seems to be a direct and obvious tension between the goals of open research and quality control.  
  1. Publishing with a fully OA journal or academic publisher that does not require a processing charge. This is obviously the most straightforward and therefore best route to OA, but raises the fundamental question of how such work is conducted and funded. The notion of the ‘scholar-led’ press, established and monitored by scholars themselves, presupposes that academics can somehow fit the work of the professional editor, copy editor, translator or type setter etc. into their spare time. In addition, many OA journals rely on charitable donations. Fundraising is also a skilled business: will universities’ development directors and offices be diverted to do the work of seeking these charitable donations? Is it possible for existing publishing houses and presses to construct a sustainable business model that allows for free and open publishing, while overlaying their own professional services onto the scholarly work provided by academics? Can already successful enterprises such as Open Book Publishers in Cambridge3 be ‘scaled up’? The members of the working group have not seen any impact assessments or pilot studies considering which of the current forms of scholarly communication will simply die out in the absence of subscription and royalty income. We would like to see evidence-based impact assessments as a matter of priority. In general, it is unclear whether even the largest and most prestigious scholarly societies will survive the loss of income that will result from a move to OA. As one member of our group put it, ‘the research is not open if it is dead’.  

Many questions remain, above and beyond those already evoked:  

  • The situation with respect to the goal of publishing of all academic monographs freely and openly remains extremely fluid, and all the enquiries we were able to make in the working group confirmed that this is an area of great uncertainty. Academic books require considerable up-front investment by publishers, and it is vital that this labour and expertise is properly supported in an open access model. How to ensure that open access books do not entail a race to the bottom in terms of editorial and production standards? 
  • Researchers and publishers will also have to think carefully about content such as book reviews, notices, short discussion pieces, author interviews and so on: content that is useful to the discipline, but peripheral to the article form and that would not generally appear in a repository, for example.   
  • The place of UK debates in the global publishing industry is unclear. Like all scholarly publishing, A&H publishing is international in nature and most journals and presses will draw from as wide an international field as possible. How will the editor of a UK-based journal, responding to the OA requirements of UK decision-making bodies, deal with international authors who are not subject to the same requirements or set of priorities? How will an international editor deal with UK academics?5 These questions come up repeatedly in conversations with colleagues.  
  • Scholarly societies in the arts and humanities do not charge a fortune for their journals, and also offer conferences, communities and support (financial and otherwise) for early-career scholars. To analyse the costs and benefits of access to their publications, it will be necessary to look across cost centres within any given institution. To offer a worked example of library costs from 2019, ‘the bundled UK cost for 2020 the RHS’s Transactions and its Camden book series is £205 (this is a maximum figure, excluding all discounts). In the financial year 1 July 2018-30 June 2019, RHS awarded (for example) £2,781.56 to support ECR researchers at York University and £3,177.16 to support ECR researchers at Oxford.’6 So it would be useful to see studies of the rate of institutional return on investment in publications by university libraries.  
  • Concerns about licensing were already well documented and summarized by Peter Mandler in 2014: ‘For one thing, we do not have full ownership of our texts ourselves – we use others’ words and images, often by permission. For another, we have our own norms of how best to incorporate one work within another – e.g. by quotation – which derivative use denies. Most important is our moral right (long acknowledged in law and ethics) to protect the integrity of our work. By all means read and disseminate our work free of charge, but do not change it as you are doing so – write your own work.’6  
  • Concerns about distortions allowed by CC BY in the reuse of oral history interviews and other sensitive/polemical content are important for many A&H colleagues as they are for our colleagues in the social sciences. 
  • Evidence of predatory publishers simply reusing content from repositories is starting to emerge, seemingly justifying concerns about CC BY as opposed to CC BY- NC-ND or CC BY-ND.7 

Footnotes

1See for instance a project on the takeover of real estate by the Church of Scientology in Clearwater, Florida: https://projects.tampabay.com/projects/2019/investigations/scientology-clearwater-real-estate, or a series of investigative articles on the post-9/11 burgeoning of the US intelligence services collected here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/william-m-arkin/

2Matthew Gold & Lauren Klein, eds. Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012), https://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu

3 ‘We are a nonprofit independent publisher with no institutional backing. Open Book relies on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality and free to read titles. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of The Polonsky Foundation, the Thriplow Charitable Trust, the Jessica E. Smith and Kevin R. Brine Charitable Trust, The Progress Foundation and the Dutch Research Council (NWO).’ https://www.openbookpublishers.com

4 See the following testimony: ‘The bi-lingual, topic-specific journal I edit…draws articles from authors across the world and is published in Switzerland. Hence, specific OA requirements pertaining to UK-based authors will be considered in setting OA policy but will probably not be a determining factor. Hence, if strict requirements are introduced around OA in relation to UK funders, this may serve to reduce the possibility for UK-based authors to submit articles to my journal. This would obviously be an issue for the journal but would also be one for UK academics also, as it would result a more limited range of potential publication outlets.’ Margot Finn, Plan S and the History Journal Landscape, A Royal Historical Society Guidance Paper, pp. 47-8. 

5 Plan S and the History Journal Landscape, A Royal Historical Society Guidance Paper, p. 69, n. 110. 

6 Peter Mandler, ‘Open Access: a Perspective from the Humanities’, Insights 27 (2), 2014, http://doi.org/10.1629/2048-7754.89 

7 Guy Lavender, Jane Secker and Chris Morrison, ‘ What happens when you find your open access PhD thesis for sale on Amazon?’, 8th July 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2021/07/08/what-happens-when-you-find-your-open-access-phd-thesis-for-sale-on-amazon/ 

Open Access monographs: Reflections from our recent symposium

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Open access book formats have been under discussion for several years and have attracted interest – and concern – from researchers in Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences as well as amongst institutions, publishers, and funders. Earlier this month the Office of Scholarly Communication organised a one-day symposium on ‘Open Access monographs: from policy to reality’ which took place at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. It aimed to enable discussion about the open access monographs agenda and its future challenges with the Cambridge community and beyond, to bring together researchers with publishers, funders, experts and innovators in the field of open monograph publishing, and to share experiences about the opportunities and realities of publishing an open access book. 

In this blog we summarise the key themes that emerged from this symposium. In favour of simplicity we accept that many of the issues discussed do not belong to one theme category only and are interlinked with each other. 

Picture showing the front cover of the symposium programme.
Symposium programme

‘What would it take to implement open access books for REF?’ 

This was one of the first questions in Prof Martin Paul Eve’s (Birkbeck, University of London) keynote speech which highlights an uncomfortable truth in the discussions about open access monograph policy in the UK these days. 

‘To publish 75% of anticipated monographic submission output for the next REF would require approximately £96m investment over the census period. This is equivalent to £19.2m per year. Academic library budgets as they are currently apportioned would not support this cost.’ [1] 

The figures are staggering and immediately show that money is the number one challenge in any discussions about monographs in this context. Which brings us swiftly to our first theme: The economics of open access. 

The economics of open access 

The distribution of the economics is the most important factor in the puzzle of open access monograph publishing. The overall consensus from both publishers and academics are that BPCs (Book Publishing Charges) for monographs do not work well in the humanities. They scale badly and concentrate costs. However, it is clear that one business model does not fit all in this sphere. A diversity of business models and ecosystems in which monographs can be published as open access would give authors choice and avoid monopolies. It was thought provoking to hear Rupert Gatti say that Open Book Publishers couldn’t scale up on their current business model to publish 250-300 books (10 times the amount they do now) but they shouldn’t have to. Instead, they can envisage a system where numerous small publishers like themselves exist next to large publishers, like Cambridge University Press (CUP). The idea of avoiding monopolies is not only key for authors but also readers as having a few publishers controlling the methods of distribution of this literature could end up restricting the way we access and use content. 

Questions were also raised about how BPCs (or their replacement) should be set. Monographs vary in length and complexity, usually determined by their subject matter, which in turn have vastly different production costs. Should there then be a pricing structure that better reflects this? And in a culture of openness, can we ask publishers to be transparent about their costs and services so researchers can make more informed choices about where to spend their grant money? 

Publishers are very aware of the impact that open access is having on the business models and the need to maintain quality in production and the peer review process. CUP stated that digital sales are becoming an important part of monograph publishing and that timing of open access is also quite an important factor in the economics. Exploring models of delayed open access might provide one solution to protecting publisher incomes whilst still opening up access to content. 

‘Students cannot learn without images’ (Dr Nicky Kozicharow, University of Cambridge)

Another important piece of the puzzle is who pays for the costs of publishing an open access book? The current model used for STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) journal article APCs (Article Processing Charges), where funders usually pay the costs, was referred to an epistemic injustice that should not be replicated as researchers in less economically developed countries are disadvantaged.

The problem around costs of reproducing third-party images was also widely discussed, especially by Dr Nicky Kozicharow. Not enough is being done to support researchers, such as art historians, who rely on images for teaching and research activities. There is a (perceived) lack of training in copyright, which was a useful message, if not an uncomfortable one, to our librarians who routinely deliver training in this and are now revisiting their communications about this. But also image holders should consider how they support researchers – whilst some big holders, such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Wellcome Trust, the Getty Collection and Wikimedia, do provide images free of charge, there was the suggestion that other collection holders should consider opening up access for researchers at affiliated institutions. This access would need to continue for a number of years beyond that affiliation so the images are accessible during the period in which a book will often be written up. 

Ethics, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion 

“Who and what is OA for? We need to start with the right question” (Prof Margot Finn, President of the Royal Historical Society) 

It is also important to view the economic question of who can afford to pay to publish an open access monograph through the lens of equality and inclusion. How can we ensure everyone has equal access to the opportunity to publish open access? Is open access a human right? The role of politics here is critical if we want to make open access work for everyone. Policymakers need to consider issues such as access, gender and nationality when making decisions that institutions and publishers have to interpret and adhere to.

Another group that suffers from the current set up for open access monographs are the early career researchers (ECRs). They often work in a precarious situation, moving between institutions on short term contracts. This restricts their ability to publish a monograph, which takes considerable time and effort. It is important that when institutions look to sign up to and implement statements such as DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment), that both monographs and journal articles are considered when looking at academic career progression. 

Of course, as we strive to make open access work for everyone, we need to be mindful of impinging on academic freedoms. As noted by Dr Steven Hill (Director of Research, Research England), researchers should still be free to choose the questions they study within the constraints of the system. Academics should also be free to choose the licence that they publish their work under. This has been a major sticking point for many academics (as we have previously written) with CC BY licences seen as an ethical issue in the humanities. Instead, what is needed is a softening of licence choices with options such as non-commercial and non-derivative available – a point also highlighted in the recent Universities UK report on ’Open Access and Monographs’. Finally, we should not make assumptions that the ethical issues around licenses are the same worldwide, because they are not. 

Scalability and sustainability 

‘We need to understand fully the obstacles that underpin academic research in order to have a sustainable, scalable, global open access model – but we are not there’ (Prof Margot Finn, President of the Royal Historical Society)

The issues around open access monographs are, at times, inextricably linked. Problems to do with economics are inseparable from issues of fairness (to sum the above section up badly) but also in scalability and sustainability. The academic monograph has its own distinct ecosystem in scholarly research. Open access monographs have a global readership, but production of open access books is not necessarily global, but concentrated on local or national levels. We need to consider the far-reaching consequences of this, including the relationship between the ‘global’ academic researcher and the ‘local’ publisher. We must also consider the role of the policymakers, often European, who set the rules in one country or part of the world and those academics who are not part of this system. Do the levels of academics in these countries and their outputs justify this dominance? We should also obtain more information on how open access books are used in order to justify the expenditure in publishing them, yet Hannah Hope, speaking for the Wellcome Trust, commented that the impact of open access books is hard to measure. Download statistics are often available and provide one measure. For example, UCL Press have had 2.5 million book downloads since its launch four years ago and Open Book Publishers report that their books are being freely accessed worldwide by over 20,000 readers each month. 

The ability of publishers to innovate is seen as a key factor in the sustainability and scalability of open access monograph publishing. The size of the publisher will most probably determine their ability to innovate, with smaller publishers being in a better position to ‘take risks’ and try out new models, even if such models end up failing or not being appropriate to implement in bigger organisations due to scalability and financial constraints. Radical OA are experimenting with various business models and bringing down BPCs. The RHS’s New Historical Perspectives (NHP) book series is designed to provide high-quality publishing support to ECR historians (ECRs defined as researchers within 10 years of finishing their PhD) whilst absorbing the costs of BPCs and relying on a generous donation to cover some of the image costs. Indeed, ‘Learned societies have a long history of innovation and experimentation in publishing’ according to Prof Margot Finn, but how they take their experimentation to the next level is yet to be figured out. 

Understanding how open access monographs can scale and be sustainable is key to figuring out the type of open access that will prevail. Green open access is not considered to be the future goal for CUP, who are experimenting with a number of different business models such as consortium models, crowdfunding and freemium models. They have also been engaging with authors, researchers and librarians worldwide to understand the monograph landscape better and to demystify issues concerning publishing process. Likewise, SpringerNature voiced concerns with green open access and although open access humanities publications account for a very small proportion of their overall open access publications (~10%) they feel that they are well positioned for a more open future. 

Collaboration, relationships, communication 

‘Publishing is not the end point. Academy as a whole needs to engage with that’ (Dr Rupert Gatti Trinity College/Faculty of Economics/Open Book Publishers) 

What is clear is that there are many players in the field of open access monograph publishing and continued and open communication between all parties is key. Within institutions, academics and research support providers (such as librarians) need to have conversations to ensure the help required is accessible, so authors are not battling with copyright issues alone or remain unaware of the full spectrum of publishing options available to them. Senior leaders at universities must engage with their academic communities to understand the issues they face. They can then in turn engage with policymakers to encourage realistic rules and guidance that would lead to meaningful, measurable outcomes. It was reassuring to hear that consultative approaches are being taken and we welcome the continuation of these. 

Publishers also have an important role in re-defining their relationship with academics. As Prof Martin Paul Eve questioned, are publishers solely service providers and academics content creators or are both parties co-producers and academic collaborators in the research process? Prof Roger Kain emphasised ‘the relationship of an author with their publisher with a journal is a very different relationship to the relationship of an author and their publisher with a monograph’ and as such this may lead to the chance to experiment further with business models, if publishers offer more added value through intellectual support for their authors. Of course, Learned Societies and holders of large collections of images have to be involved as well so that their position within the research process is well understood. These conversations should also happen in and between different geographical places because academic research will always have international collaborations. 

We also have to be mindful of the messages that come out of these conversations. Time and again we heard the notion that “open access means bad peer review” is still alive in the academic community. This is a myth that all publishers, as well as librarians and other research support staff, are keen to debunk. Another myth is the misconception that “open access is the end of print”. As Prof Roger Kain put it ‘open access does not mean wholly replacing the physical copies of a book but help creators of content to reach wider audiences…OA and print will co-exist’. The term “open science” was noted as appearing to exclude the humanities and, therefore, disengaging researchers before they’ve even got started, even though open science includes all disciplines (this is the reason why in Cambridge we prefer to use “open research”). The language used in Plan S communication was seen as being too opaque, especially for non-native English speakers. If we are encouraging open research, we should be using language that is open and transparent, especially when open research is an international endeavour, as already mentioned. It is important that messages are correct and clear so humanities scholars and other stakeholders can engage fully in debates about the future of open access monograph publishing. 

Summary 

‘If we are going to take open access for monographs forward in a timely fashion it has to be taken forward as a shared enterprise…an enterprise involving academics as content creators, their funders, their universities…but above all their publishers’ (Prof Roger Kain, School of Advanced Study, University of London & Chairman of the UUK OA Monographs Group)

The symposium saw common themes emerging around issues with open access for monographs as the system currently stands, but also the potential benefits and possibilities that open access could open up into the future. There was consensus that open access needs to go forward as a shared enterprise with all stakeholders being equal players. Looking into the future there was also concern about the visibility of humanities research going forward when compared to the natural sciences and that humanities authors should strive to demonstrate the impact of their publishing activities. 

Many of the themes discussed in this symposium echoed the recommendations as well as concerns outlined in the Universities UK Open Access Monograph report which was published a few days after this symposium took place. The report emphasised that complex questions still remained around issues such as costs, scalability and business models, but it was positive to read statements that the ‘academic book occupies a very distinct space in scholarly research’ reinforcing the fact that monographs are fundamentally different in intention and in kind when compared with journals or fields of research, and that ‘academic book publishing is an international activity’, with whatever implications this entails, as discussed earlier. 

Perhaps it is fitting to conclude with a dose of pragmatism by quoting one of Dr Steven Hill’s remarks at the end of the symposium 

‘...a really strong dose of pragmatism has entered this debate; that we all recognise that there are different visions of utopia that different actors in the system might have, but we can see that some of our visions of utopia have to be compromised in order to achieve something that is better than we have now and enable the kind of innovative scholarship that more openness will drive’. 

and a note of optimism by Prof Martin Paul Eve who said the following when he was asked if there are lessons to be learnt from how open access has been applied to journals so far. 

‘…we can learn a lot from how the open access debate has played out. I think we also learn a lot in seeing how compromises were reached within that to get to a point that is far better than a decade ago in terms of open access for journals…Momentum is growing, and acceptance is growing. And the idea that we don’t lose quality when things are available openly is growing. All these things are positive and I think we need to take those positives, articulate them from the start and see where that takes us rather than re-inventing the wheel, having the same argument, the same debates, and ending up in the same place, probably, but 20 years from now rather that in the next decade’. 

Recordings and most of the presentations are available in the University of Cambridge institutional repository, Apollo as well as the OSC YouTube channel. We would like to acknowledge that this symposium was supported by the Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. 

References

(1) Source: Eve, M.P. et al., (2017). Cost estimates of an open access mandate for monographs in the UK’s third Research Excellence Framework. Insights. https://doi.org/10.1629/uksg.392) 

Published 23 October 2019 

Written by Dr Lauren Cadwallader and Maria Angelaki 

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Disruptive innovation: notes from SCONUL winter conference

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On Friday 27 November Danny Kingsley attended the SCONUL Winter Conference 2015 which addressed the theme of disruptive innovation and looked at the changes in policy and practice which will shape the scholarly communications environment for years to come. This blog is a summary of her notes from the event. The hastag was #sconul15  and there is a link in Twitter.

Disruptions in scholarly publishing

Dr Koen Becking, President of the Executive Board, Tilburg University, spoke first. He is the lead negotiator with the publishers in the Netherlands. Things are getting tight as we count down to the end of the year given the Dutch negotiations with Elsevier (read more in ‘Dutch boycott of Elsevier – a game changer?‘)

Koen asked: what is the role of a university – is it knowledge to an end, knowledge in relation to learning or knowledge in relation to professional skills? He said that 21st century universities should face society. While Tilburg University is still tied to traditional roots, it is now focused in the idea of ‘third generation university’. The idea of impact on society – the work needs to impact on society.

The Dutch are leading on the open access fight and Koen said they may look at legislation to force the government goal of open access to research articles of 40% by 2016 & 100% by 2024. [Note that the largest Dutch funder NOW has just changed their policy to say funds can no longer be used to pay for hybrid OA and that green OA must be available ‘the moment of’ publication].

Kurt noted that the way the Vice Chancellors got involved in the publisher discussions in the Netherlands was the library director came to him ask about increasing the subscription budget and the he asked why it was going up so much given the publisher’s profit levels. Money talks.

Managing the move away from historic print spend

Liam Earney from Jisc said there were several drivers for the move from historic print spend and we need models that are transparent, equitable, sustainable and acceptable to institutions. They have been running a survey on acceptable metrics on cost allocation (note that Cambridge has participated in this process). Jisc will shortly launch a consultation document on institutions on new proposals.

Liam noted that part of their research found that it was apparent that across Jisc bands and within Jisc bands there are profound differences in what institutions paying for the same material – sometimes by a factor of 100’s of 1000’s pounds different to access the same content in similar institutions.

They also worked out that if they took a mix of historical print spend and a new metric it would take over 50 years to migrate to a new model. This is not realistic.

Jisc is supported by an expert group of senior librarians (including members at Cambridge) who are working on an alternative. Liam noted that historical print spend is harmful to the ability of a consortium to negotiate coherently. Any new solution needs to meet the needs of academics and institutions.

Building a library monograph collection: time for the next paradigm shift?

Diane Brusvoort from the University of Aberdeen comes from the US originally and talked about collaborative collection development – we can move together. Her main argument was that for years we have built libraries on a ‘just in case model’ and we can no longer afford to do that. We need to refine our ‘just in time’ purchasing to take care of faculty requests, also have another strand working across sector to develop the ‘for the ages’ library.

She mentioned the FLorida Academic REpository (FLARE) which is the statewide shared collection of low use print materials from academic libraries in Florida. Libraries look at what is in FLARE and move the FLARE holding into their cataloguing. It is a one copy repository for low use monographs.  The Digital Public Library of America is open to anything that had digitised content can be put in the DPA portal and deals with the problem of items that they are all siloed.

Libraries are also taking books off the shelf when there is an electronic version. This is a pragmatic decision not made because lots of people are reading the electronic one preferentially, it is simply to save shelf space.

Diane noted a benefit of UK compared to UK is the size – it is possible to do collaborative work here in ways you can’t in the US. We need collaborative storage and to create more opportunities for collaborative collections development.

The Metric Tide

Professor James Wilsdon – University of Sussex spoke about the HEFCE report he contributed to The Metric Tide: Report of the Independent Review of the Role of Metrics in Research Assessment and Management. 

This report looked at responsible uses of quantitative data in research management and assessment. He said we should not turn our backs on big data and its possibilities but we know of our experience in the research systems that these can be used as blunt tools in the process. He felt that across the community at large the discussion about metrics was unhelpfully polarised. The debate is open to misunderstanding and need a more sophisticated understanding on ways they can be used more responsibly.

The agreement is that peer review is the ‘least worst’ form of academic governance that we have. Metrics should support not supplant academic management. This underpins the design of assessment exercises like the REF.

James noted that the metrics review team was getting back together that afternoon to discuss ‘section d’ in the report. He referred to this as being ‘like a band reunion’.

A new era for library publishing? The potential for collaboration amongst new university presses

This workshop was presented by Sue White, Director of Computing and Library Services and Graham Stone, Information Resources Manager, University of Huddersfield.

Sue talked about the Northern Collaboration of libraries looking at joining forces to create a publishing group. They started with a meeting in October 2104. There is a lot of uncertainty in the landscape, with a big range of activity from well established university presses to those doing no publishing at all. She said the key challenges to the idea of a joint press was the competition between institutions. But they decided the idea merited further exploration.

Discussions were around the national monograph strategy roadmap  that advocated university publishing models. The Northern Collaboration took a discussion paper to Jisc – and they suggested three areas of activity. They were:

  • Benchmarking and data gathering to see what was happening in the UK.
  • Second to identify best practice and possible workflow efficiencies- common ground.
  • Third was exploring potential for the library publishing coalition.

The project is about sharing and providing networks for publishing ventures. In the past couple of days Jisc has agreed to take the first two forward and welcome input. They want some feedback about taking it forward.

Graham then spoke about the Huddersfield University Press which has been around since 2007 – but was re-launched with an open access flavour. They have been publishing open access materials stuff for three to four years. They publish three formats – monographs, journal publications and sound recordings.

The principles governing the Press is that everything is peer reviewed, as a general rule everything should be open access and they publish by the (ePrints) open access repository which gets lots of downloads. The Press is managed by the library but led by the academics. Business model is a not for profit as it is scholarly communication. If there were any surplus it would be reinvested in the Press. In last four years they have published 12 monographs, of which six are open access.

Potential authors have to come with their own funding. Tends to be an institutional funder sponsored arrangement. The proposal form has a question ‘how is this going to be funded’? This point is ignored for the peer review process. Having money does not guarantee publishing. It means it will be looked at but doesn’t guarantee publishing. The money pays for a small print run, copy editing not staff costs. About a 70,000 word monograph costs in the region of £3000-£4000.

Seven journals are published in the repository – there is an overlay on the repository, preserved in Portico. Discoverable through Google (via OAI-PMH) compliance with repository, Library webscale discovery includes membership of the DOAJ. Their ‘Teaching and lifelong learning’ journal has every tickbox on DOAJ.

The enablers for this Press have been senior support in the university at DVC level and the capacity and enthusiasm of an Information Resource Manager to absorb the Press into existing role. Also having an editorial board with people across the institution. The Press is operating on a shoestring hard. It is difficult to establish reputation and convincing the potential stakeholders and impact. A lack of long term funding means it is difficult to forward plan.

They also noted that there are not very many professional support networks out there and it would be good to have one. They need specialist help with author contracts and licences.

Who will disrupt the disruptors?

The last talk was by Martin Eve, Senior Lecturer in Literature, Technology and Publishing, Birkbeck, University of London.  This was an extremely entertaining and thought provoking talk. The slides are available.

Martin started with critical remarks about the terminology of ‘disruptive’, arguing that often the word is used so the public monopoly can be broken up into private hands. That said, there are parts of the higher education sector which are broken and need disruption.

Disruption is an old word – from Latin used first in 15th century. Now it actually means the point at which an entire industry is shifted out. What we see now is just a series of small increments. The changes happening in the higher education sector are not technological they are social and it is difficult to break that cycle of authority and how it works.

Martin argued that libraries need to be strategic and pragmatic. We have had a century long breakdown of the artificial scarcities in trading of knowledge coming to a head in the digital age. There are new computational practices with no physical or historical analogy – the practices don’t fit well with current understandings. He gave a couple of historical examples where in the 1930s people made similar claims.

The book as a product of scholarly communication is so fetishized that when we want the information we need the real object – we cannot conceive of it in another form.

Universities in the digital age just don’t look like they did before. We have an increasingly educated populace – more people can actually read this stuff so the argument that ‘the public’ can’t understand it is elitist and untrue. Institutional missions need to be to benefit society.

Martin discussed the issues with the academic publication market. A reader always needs a particular article – the traditional discourses around the market play out badly. You don’t know if you need a particular article until you read it and if you do need it you can’t replace it with anything else.

Certain publications can have a rigorous review practice because they are receiving high quality submissions. But they only get high quality submissions if you have lots of them and they get that reputation because of a rigorous review practice. So early players have the advantage.

He noted that different actors care about the academic market in different ways. Researchers produce academic products for themselves – to buy an income and promotion. Publishers frame their services as doing things for authors – but they don’t do enough for readers and libraries. Who pays? Researchers have zero price sensitivity. Libraries are stuck between rock & hard place. They have the cash but are told how to spend it. The whole thing is completely dysfunctional as a market. In the academy, reading is underprivileged. Authorship is rewarded.

Martin then talked about open access and how it affects the Humanities. He noted that monographs are acknowledged as different – eg: HEFCE mandate. There are higher barriers for entry to new publishers – people don’t have a good second book to give away to an OA publisher. There are different employment practices, for example creative writers are often employed on a 0.5 contract – they are writing novels and selling them and commercial publishers get antsy about requirements for open access because there is a cross over with trade books.

The subscription model exists on the principle that if enough people contribute then you have enough centrally to pay for what the costs are. It assumes a rivalrous mode – the assumption is there will always be greedy people who won’t pay in if they don’t get an exclusive benefit.

The Open Library of the Humanities is funded by a library consortium. It is based on arXiv funding model and Knowledge Unlatched. Libraries pay into a central fund in the same way of a subscription. Researcher who publish with us do not have to be at an institution who is funding or even at an institution. There are 128 libraries financially supporting the model (as of Monday should be 150). The rates are very low – each one only has to pay about $5 per article. They are publishing approximately 150 articles per year.

Published 28 November 2015
Written by Dr Danny Kingsley
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