A recent one-day colloquium sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research and the Royal Historical Society was called precisely to bring together major institutional players (Scholarly Societies, Journals, and Publishers) for a conversation about the best ways forward (the Tweet stream is here). The general feeling seems to be that while every well-meaning historian is keen to promote Open Access (a show of hands at the conference confirmed this), the Gold Route, whereby authors and institutions are asked to shoulder the cost of peer review and publishing, is just not workable in the humanities.
There is also the beginnings of what many feel is an apparent solution to the problem. Both the past and present presidents of the Royal Historical Society, and some 21 editors of major humanities journals, signed a letter proposing the imposition of an increased embargo period on the articles in their journals - essentially suggesting they be allowed to have three years in which to make money on their publications before being forced to make them available through Open Access. They also proposed maintaining a two-track system to ensure that overseas and non-academic authors are excluded from the government led requirement for Open Access.
To me this feels like Saint Augustine's plaint: "Grant
me chastity and continence, but not yet." (Confessions 8:17).
Let me be clear, though.
I understand completely the anxieties motivating these institutions and
commentators. A narrowly defined Gold
Route process of the sort privileged by the Finch Report is not workable in the
humanities. The 'author pays' model is
predicated on the direct funding of research by government, and on the
assumption that the consumers of research outputs are the same as the
producers. In the case of history this
is not true.
The vast majority of
historical research and publication is not funded by project grants; and while
a higher proportion is funded through the Universities, and through QR, there
is still a large body of excellent work that is undertaken by independent
scholars, or as part of a self-funded PhD, or by staff in institutions which do
not receive QR funding or participate in the REF. And similarly, all historians seek to reach a
wider audience than most scientists, and imagine their work in the light of a successful 'trade
monograph'; which itself forms a recognised academic achievement.
In other words, I largely agree with the diagnosis that the main
thrust of the Finch Report is unworkable.
Though, of course, the Report does not restrict academics to the single
route to Open Access, and makes it clear that other types of OA (Green Route)
are entirely consistent with the objective of making publicly funded research
available to the public. Following on
from this, I also believe the RCUK policy to cover the new costs entailed through
grants is also largely unworkable, and if poorly executed in pursuit of a
narrow Gold Route form of publication will create issues of fair access, with institutional
meddling in academic decision making and serious problems for post-graduates
and early career academics.
What is missing in all this is any positive model of Open
Access publishing that takes seriously the fundamental interests and values of history
as a discipline, as opposed to the interests of the collection of institutions
and journals that purport to speak for it.
For myself I have a clear sense of what I would like Open Access in
history (and more broadly in the academy) to look like in ten years' time; and
it would have the following characteristics:
- It would be built on the deposit of articles and research data (including notes) in institutional repositories, linked to APIs that allow their content to be re-'published', mashed up and re-used (with acknowledgment).
- The route to 'publication' would include the initial deposit of research materials, followed by the posting of a 'rough draft' for comment and revision, leading to a post-publication peer review system. The author would then be allowed to specify at what revision the 'article' is complete, with perhaps a six month norm for revisions. See for instance the History Working Papers Project.
- Metrics for downloads, re-use and citations for the now online article will be used to generate a measure of scholarly importance. These metrics can include the kind of complex systems for assessing 'authority' (i.e. whose post peer review assessments are worth most) implicit in the Altmetrics movement.
- 'Journals' will be made up of adopted 'articles' that fit their theme and which are moulded to a particular house style in the open peer review process. In this ecology of scholarship journals will take on a new intellectual role in shaping debate and argument, and in defining academic communities, and will have a 'promoting' role rather than a 'publishing' role.
- Academic monographs will be seen as a simple extension of article publication - i.e. either in the form of long articles, or perhaps as a collection of pieces created as 'articles'.
- Genuine 'Trade History' will continue to be sold in the generic forms of biography and narrative etc., but the underlying academic historical content will be available in institutional repositories, while the revisions and adaptions for a popular audience are dealt with separately.
- The co-archiving of secondary writing and notes and research materials will allow for the creation of an increasingly vertically integrated form of writing, in which source material and commentary are connected.
- The costs of maintaining, curating and archiving the system will be borne by the Universities, with savings from the journal and book purchasing costs. A separate tNA or British Library repository will support and archive the work of otherwise unaffiliated scholars.
Getting to this point is not straightforward. But the universities are fully empowered to
use the RCUK funding to beef up their repositories, rather than paying journal
fees. The repositories could also take a first step
towards a more rigorous ecology of scholarship by archiving and making
available the underlying research data we all endlessly collect (and jealously
guard as the capital of an ego driven system of professional advancement).
At the moment most public debate and effort seems to be
devoted to preserving the current business model that underpins the
public/private partnership that lies at the heart of academic publishing. The
journals worry that their main income stream (allowing them to provide studentships
etc) will be eliminated; while the publishers worry that their privileged
position between subsidised creators of content and subsidised buyers of
content will be squeezed. Both these
anxieties are justified.
But, we need to
ask ourselves whether we really want to use the roundabout and expensive route
of generating income from University Library budgets via the publication of
materials produced by academic staff, to take money from the providers of
education - the Universities - in order to give it to the journals and scholarly
societies, in order to allow them, to in turn purchase education from the
Universities. It is ridiculous.
As for the academic presses, they have spent thirty years
squeezing the 'added value' from their operation. In-house copy-editing and proof reading for
the most part went ages ago. And many
presses now demand what amounts to 'camera ready' copy. If the presses do not want to serve their
traditional role in an ecology of scholarship (sifting and polishing its
products), then it is not clear what their profits are based on. At the moment, the greatest input on the
part of the presses lies in advertising and licensing content, policing its
re-use and in producing hard copy versions of books and articles that are largely
unwanted (ask any librarian). A
thoroughgoing Open Access model eliminates the need for selling, licensing, and
policing, while time will take care of the romantic attachment to wood pulp.
Current debate seems most fully motivated by a reactionary
and defensive fear that a change in the nature of academic publication will
unravel the systems of authority and organisational finance that used to
deliver public debate. But, if we have
faith in the importance of the academy and of scholarship, then we need to
continually re-invent the process. Open
Access provides a perfect opportunity to reconnect with the founding principles
of the academy.
