1. OA in the Humanities and
Social Sciences
5th Conference on Open Access
Scholarly Publishing
September 18-20, 2013, Riga
Eelco Ferwerda
OAPEN Foundation
2. Contents
– HSS versus STM
– DOAJ
– P versus E
– Attitudes
– Anxieties
– Funding
– Business models in HSS
– How libraries can make a difference
3.
4.
5. OA benefits all research
‘Whether a given line of research serves
wellness or wisdom, energy or
enlightenment, protein synthesis or public
safety, OA helps it serve those purposes
faster, better, and more universally.’
Peter Suber, ‘Open Access’ (MIT Press, 2012)
7. Research output in HSS
• AHRC estimates just a third of research
output is in the form of articles, two-thirds
is books (Humanities)
• Monographs are the preferred genre
• Print is the preferred format
• E is growing for discovery and reading
• Print remains the primary edition
10. Expanded timescales
• Our workshops with authors and publishers
confirmed that a book takes on average 3
years to create
• Peer reviewing a book is a bigger commitment
than an article
• The editors in the interviews spoke of the
‘lifetimes’ authors spend on research
• This is an output that reflects years of work
http://oapen-uk.jiscebooks.org/
11. Business Models
• Publishers often have to cost recover on
the single entity of the book
• Some titles are a gamble – bigger risk
than an article
• HSS researchers need that first book for
their first job or for promotion – asking
the publisher to take a risk, not as
predominant in STEM
12. Anxiety
Our institutional case studies, workshops and
focus groups show that there is an anxiety in HSS
- worried about getting published
- worried about access to funding if goes gold
- worried about new licensing models (even
though they now retain copyright – makes them
nervous)
13. • understand
anxieties
• address /
explore them
• make authors
feel more
confident
• explain why
RCUK prefers
CC BY
• help authors feel
equipped to
negotiate
15. OA business models in HSS
• HSS has less access to funding,
particularly central funding for ‘Gold OA’,
based on OA publication funds
• HSS needs other models to achieve OA:
• Emergence of ‘Library side’ models
– Based on libraries’ existing acquisitions budget
– Three examples:
16.
17. Knowledge Unlatched
Libraries purchase OA books:
• Libraries form a global consortium
• Use their existing acquisitions budget
• Select individually, purchase collectively
• Price based on fixed or ‘first digital copy’ costs
• Libraries receive value-added edition
• Monographs are then published Open Access
– First pilot underway
– Approx. 20 publishers, 30 libraries
http://www.knowledgeunlatched.org/
18.
19. OpenEdition
Libraries license OA content:
– OpenEdition Freemium
– Free content online (HTML)
– Premium content (PDF, e-reader formats) and
services for libraries
– Revenues split 1/3-2/3 between OpenEdition and
publishers
• Intended to:
– make OA content discoverable
– provide a business model for OA content
– help sustain platform
http://www.openedition.org
20.
21. Open Library of Humanities
Libraries ‘subscribe’ to OA journal:
• OLH: megajournal for HSS
– Inspired by PLOS ONE
– Initiative of Martin Eve & Caroline Edwards
– different business model:
Library Partnership Subsidy
– subscription model:
• Many libraries > low subsidies!
https://www.openlibhums.org/
22. Opportunity for Libraries
Libraries can make a difference for OA,
especially in HSS, but:
– We can’t sell library side models door-to-door
– Libraries have been the driving force of the
OA movement
– They need to take another step, by organizing
themselves
– Getting involved in the transition to OA
23. Opportunity for Libraries
• What if research libraries supporting OA:
– Reserved a small, fixed percentage of their acquisitions budget
for OA initiatives
– Established a Strategic Library Alliance for the transition to OA
– Use this budget to help develop the road to OA
• (The percentage could become a moving target, a moving wall
between OA and TA)
Disclaimers:
– We don’t expect Libraries to solve the transition by themselves
– Libraries are not cash machines that will make OA work
– Libraries should help determine how OA will work
HSS, although they do use the library – still like to purchase their own books – there is still that link to the print….
Even if using the library, the predominant format is print….which is quite different from the journals area where most access and use of content is in electronic format.
Last 3 are drawn from free-text comments: is there a real difference between self- and no-funding? Hard to say. Respondents could choose multiple options. Core university funds are most important, although if you aggregate RC and other funders they are nearly as big. -- In HSS in the UK – the majority of researchers use core university funds – ie. their salary to undertake the research which supports their research output which is the monograph. There is less funding coming from research councils or other funders compared to STM areas. Of the 4 universities interviewed in our case studies, all of them were acutely aware of the lower amount of funding that HSS receive in comparison to STEM areas and the impact that this will have on a gold type model. The two learned societies we spoke with expressed how the curtailment of RCUK funds for travel for example, have impacted HSS researchers and they look to learned societies more to support early career research in particular. In HSS which has less riches and less of the funding pot, a lot of the work undertaken by academics in terms of editorial boards, series editors, learned societies is based on good will. The likelihood of being paid is much lower. “ Most of the Society’s activities – managing its publications, advocacy, researcher support, membership, finances, administration, events and so on – are done for free by academic officers and councillors. The editorial boards for the various publications, and the academic editors for the Studies in History series, also contribute their time for free. Some are able, in theory, to negotiate with their institutions to reclaim the time spent on these activities, but in practice this rarely works. For others, there is no possibility even of a negotiation. Certainly, most of our interviewees felt that they were doing most of the work for the Society in their own time – which, as one interviewee stressed, is a common feature of life for academics, even those who are not involved with a learned society.”