‘Giving it away’ Matthew Reisz’s artcle in the THES assesses what open access means for academic monograph publishing

Compact for OA Publishing Equity:

Cornell, Harvard, Dartmouth, MIT and UC Berkeley have all signed up to this compact:

We the undersigned universities recognize the crucial value of the services provided by scholarly publishers, the desirability of open access to the scholarly literature, and the need for a stable source of funding for publishers who choose to provide open access to their journals’ contents. Those universities and funding agencies receiving the benefits of publisher services should recognize their collective and individual responsibility for that funding, and this recognition should be ongoing and public so that publishers can rely on it as a condition for their continuing operation.

Therefore, each of the undersigned universities commits to the timely establishment of durable mechanisms for underwriting reasonable publication charges for articles written by its faculty and published in fee-based open-access journals and for which other institutions would not be expected to provide funds. We encourage other universities and research funding agencies to join us in this commitment, to provide a sufficient and sustainable funding basis for open-access publication of the scholarly literature.”

As the transition from print publication to digital publication of scholarly work becomes more prevalent, university presses are being forced to adapt their business plans to appeal to the new electronic demand.
A recent survey published by the American Association of University Presses estimates an average 10 percent loss in sales and revenue between July and December 2008.

As a result of declining earnings, university presses are also starting to take different approaches to their business models. For instance, Yale University Press plans to cut back on printing and focus more on their new e-book program.

In today’s soft economy, the e-book system has acted as a way out of financial shortcomings

The University of Michigan Press, however, has reacted differently by reestablishing itself as a sub-organization of the university’s library. In effect, the press will receive funding as an academic department, lessening the pressure to follow a profitable business model.

(Via The Tech – MIT’s Student Newspaper.)

A new report released on 27th March 2009 by Universities UK and the Research Information Network, recommends that

HEIs establish dedicated budgets to which researchers can apply for funds to meet the costs of publication fees.

(Via Open Access News.)

Bloomsbury unveils academic imprint The Bookseller reports
on 5th September 2008.

Bloomsbury is making a bold move into academic publishing with the launch of an “on demand” imprint that will publish titles online for free … The imprint will use Creative Commons licences to allow non-commercial use of all its titles on publication. Pinter described it as ‘a major commitment to spreading knowledge more easily throughout the world, with a sustainable business model’.

Progress toward OA in the social sciences and humanities: “

Tracey Caldwell, OA in the humanities badlands, Information World Review, June 4, 2008. Excerpt:

The field of social sciences and humanities (SSH)…faces a…crisis in publishing [similar to that in the STM fields]. In STM, this crisis has been one of the drivers for open access, but this has not been the case in SSH so far.

The dearth of funding in the SSH sector has been one the main reasons it has lagged behind in getting research online and embracing open access. There is not a lot of money around to finance author-pays models of open access (OA), although there has also been an absence of drive on the part of researchers towards open access, backed by a cultural resistance in some disciplines to any sharing of research at all.

But recently, there has been a dawning of understanding among researchers that OA can bring benefits much broader than simple speed and ease of access to research.

At the same time, publishers facing demands for open access have started to make their concerns known, citing the long tail of access to research in this sector that would threaten their business model. Compared with the STM sector, there is a much higher proportion of journal articles accessed for the first time over a year after publication in SSH….

The launch of the Open Humanities Press (OHP), an international OA publishing collective in critical and cultural theory, at the end of April is one sign of the growing realisation of the need for OA in humanities….

The EU has put its weight behind moves to hasten OA in SSH through the so-called Action 32 of the STM-based COST (Co-operation in the field of Scientific and Technical Research) European programme. Action 32 aims to create a digital infrastructure for collaborative humanities research on the web….

[Jonathan Gray of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF)] believes the first step to OA in the SSH sector is to provide better access to research that is already in the public domain….

Many researchers in this sector simply do not know how to go about making their research open access. A survey by RIN showed that only 14% of arts and humanities researchers (compared with 30% in the physical sciences and 36% in the life sciences) think they are familiar with the options for making their research outputs open access.

[David Green, global journals publishing director for Taylor & Francis] believes it is too early to tell what the true impact of OA would be on the SSH sector.

‘One of the big American medical journals found a one-time drop of around 5-10% of subscriptions when it made its back archive free to access after a couple of years. We saw something similar, if less marked, with two of our journals when they introduced their 12- and 24-month embargo postprint policies. Renewals since have been good. This seems a common experience: a small loss in the first year after introducing some form of OA, followed by a large increase in usage.’

So would it hold more widely in SSH? ‘Hard to say, but we would remain concerned that SSH material has a much longer half-life and much longer usage tail than STM….

[Michael Jubb, director of the Research Information Network (RIN)] is part of a concerted effort to guide institutions towards centralised arrangements to pay publishing fees. He says: ‘I see no sign at all that research councils have much enthusiasm for meeting the costs of publishing. I am chairing a meeting on payment of publication fees and the practicalities of how institutions might take a more strategic approach to payment for publication….

The idea of providing a quality assurance layer to open access articles deposited in institutional repositories [sometimes called 'overlay journals'] may be of especial interest to the fragmented and cash-strapped social sciences and humanities communities….

(Via Open Access News.)

The Open Humanities Press will launch next Monday. From today’s announcement:

On May 12, 2008, the Open Humanities Press (OHP) will launch with 7 of the leading Open Access journals in critical and cultural theory. A non-profit, international grass-roots initiative, OHP marks a watershed in the growing embrace of Open Access in the humanities.

‘OHP is a bold and timely venture’ said J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, a long-time supporter of the Open Access movement and OHP board member. ‘It is designed to make peer-reviewed scholarly and critical works in a number of humanistic disciplines and cross-disciplines available free online. Initially primarily concerned with journals, OHP may ultimately also include book-length writings. This project is an admirable response to the current crisis in scholarly publishing and to the rapid shift from print media to electronic media. This shift, and OHP’s response to it, are facets of what has been called ‘critical climate change.’’

‘The future of scholarly publishing lies in Open Access’ agreed Jonathan Culler, Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University and fellow member of OHP’s editorial advisory board. ‘Scholars in the future should give careful consideration to the where they publish, since their goal should be to make the products of their research as widely available as possible, to people throughout the world. Open Humanities Press is a most welcome initiative that will help us move in this direction.’ …

(Via Open Access News.)

The old ways fade – Information World Review: By Michelle Perry 07 Apr 2008

Not since the invention of the printing press has the publishing industry been in such upheaval. Traditional revenue sources and audiences are slipping away, conventional business models are being turned on their head, and the way information is consumed is radically different from even a decade ago … If established publishers want to stay in the game then they have to shake off preconceived ideas about information provision.

The University of Stirling has become the first academic institution in the UK to oblige staff to make all their published research available online.

Clare Allan said:

The University now requires all published journal articles to be deposited by authors, as soon as possible after they are accepted for publication, and in compliance with the publishers’ copyright agreements. 

(Via Open Access News.)

The Harvard OA mandate Plenty of comment on Harvard’s “yes” vote for OA.(Via Open Access News.)
Information World Review (Issue 204, March 2008)  quotes Robert Darnton, Director of Harvard University Library, thus:

We academics provide the content for scholarly journals. We evaluate articles as referees, we serve on editorial boards, we work as editors ourselves, yet the journals force us to buy back our work, in published form, at outrageous prices.

Harvard’s new policy will be

a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available through our own university repository.