Open access in the humanities and social sciences

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Open Access in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Louise Skelding

Senior Publishing Editor, SAGE


What is Open Access?

● Green;

● Delayed Open Access;

● Gold;

● Gratis or Libre?;

● Licences: CC-BY-WTF?


Open Access movement

● Rapid growth of the internet and internet access;

● Print journals are becoming obsolete;

● Internet provides new ways of communicating research (and not just through peer-reviewed publication);

● Rising cost of journals;

● Tax payers should be able to access results of government-funded research.


Moving faster toward OA

● “Academic publishers make Murdoch look like a socialist.” (August 2011);

● Cost of Knowledge (January 2012);

● Report of the Working Group on Expanding Access to Published Research Findings (June 2012);

● Announcements from RCUK, HEFCE, European Commission (July 2012).


RCUK● Accessibility to publicly-funded research;

Ideas and knowledge derived from publicly-funded research must be made available and accessible for public use, interrogation and scrutiny, as widely, rapidly and effectively as practicable.

● Rigorous quality assurance;Published research outputs must be subject to rigorous quality assurance, through effective peer review mechanisms.

● Efficient and cost-effective access mechanisms;

● Long-term preservation and accessibility of outputs.


RCUK compliance

● Gold with CC-BYOr if the publisher will not offer Gold CC-BY then they must offer:

● Green (at least post print) with a maximum embargo period of 12 months (6 for STM journals), and CC-BY-NC.


Challenges

For institutions and libraries

● Who will administer OA grants?;

● What about non-UK based journals?

For authors and journals

● A lot of research undertaken in HSS doesn’t come with funding grants;

● Will author-pays OA curtail academic freedom?;

● What about independent researchers and those from poorer institutions?


Pure Open Access journals in HSS

Directory of Open Access Journals: www.doaj.org



But beware!

“Potential, possible or probable predatory OA publishers”: http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/


Hybrid Open Access

● Gold open access within a traditional subscription-based journal e.g.

SAGE Choice; Wiley OnlineOpen; Springer Open Choice; Taylor & Francis Open Select;


The future? (I)

What about current model is worth preserving?

• Revenue – few journals operate entirely on subs cash; few would exist without it;

• Publishers undertake digital preservation;

• Neutral in regards to disciplines/funding levels, funders and universities;

• Ordering through pre-publication sifting and journal branding, backed up by hosting/search infrastructure;

• Day to day work and investment in publishing technologies done by third party, not academics or university;

• No barriers to entry for authors.


The future (II)

Alternatives

• New university presses?

• Self-organisation (Open Journals Systems)

• Super-repositories (publish then sift – places burden on reader)


The future (III)

● Way forward:

• Depends on collective action; HSS needs to develop position and voice

• Greater engagement from key UK players – note STM focus of RCUK, government

• Integrate with international developments – what happens in EU, US, etc

• All parties likely to undergo change:• Societies weaned off journal revenue• Leaner publishers (service providers)• Journals will die/new OA journals will start up• Lengthy transition likely for HSS


That’s all folks!

Email any tricky questions to:

Louise Skelding

[email protected]

Documents

Open access in the humanities and social sciences