Learned Society Case Studies

Quite early in our research programme, we picked up on the importance of learned societies in the humanities and social sciences. We ran a focus group for learned society representatives and identified some important themes about the role of publishing in their activities and business models. We subsequently ran two case studies with learned societies in order to better understand the detailed relationships between their publishing work and their disciplinary support activities.

The first case study was with the Royal Historical Society. This well-established and prestigious association is run by officers, mostly academics, who are responsible for managing its publications, events and researcher support activities. We interviewed six officers and synthesised the findings, which can be found here.

The second case study was with the Regional Studies Association. This is a slightly newer society with a strong inter-disciplinary focus and a larger professional staff than the RHS. We interviewed two staff members and several officers (again, mostly academics). The findings are currently being finalised and will be shared shortly.

OAPEN-UK Project update May 2013

It’s been a little while since we checked in on the OAPEN-UK project but we have been very busy since the steering group meeting in February this year. Here’s an update on some of the key things we’ve been working on.

  • We’ve completed the case studies with the Royal Historical Society and with the Regional Studies Association. The RHS case study can be seen in our Research Findings section: the RSA is being finalised and should be published by the end of the month.
  • Our programme of publisher interviews begins later this month. We’re working with all kinds of publishers – commercial, university presses and new open access start-ups – to investigate some of the issues that they might face in implementing an open access business model for monographs. We’re trying to make sure that we interview two or three people from each publisher, to get a really rounded view of the challenges and opportunities from a number of perspectives.
  • We’re also busy setting up our institutional case studies with Sussex, York, Lincoln and Nottingham: these will begin in June. Again, we’ll be talking to several people in each university – between six and ten, usually – to get a really comprehensive picture of what they think might be the main issues in supporting open access monographs within their institution. We’re keen to understand practical issues, but also cultural ones – the university’s ability to influence the behaviours and preferences of researchers, and the pressure points where views would need to be changed if open access monographs are to be accepted (and not just by researchers!).
  • We’re working on a guide to Creative Commons licences for monograph authors in the humanities and social sciences. Our research so far has shown that this is a major concern for academics, and it’s clear that the information that’s currently available can be confusing for them. We are putting together a guide, responding to some of the concerns about Creative Commons expressed in Government enquiries and other places, which will be checked by legal representatives and edited by academics to ensure it is reliable and relevant. We’re excited about this one, and hope to launch it at the Open Access Monogrpahs Conference in July.
  • We’re still plugging away at the quantitative data. We’ve worked with the steering group to develop a methodology that we’re all comfortable with, but it requires some additional data before it’s really robust so we’ve decided not to release the first year of data just yet. We’re hopeful that after our next round of data collection in September we will be ready to share some early findings.

We’ve also been busy attending meetings and conferences, talking about the OAPEN-UK project, and have had enthusiastic responses to lots of our findings. The researcher survey from last year was a particular hit at the recent UKSG conference – we ran a ‘pub quiz’ for attendees at our breakout session and were surprised at how difficult it was for them to guess the answers to questions about researchers’ publishing habits and open access views. An educational experience all round!

Conference registration now open!

Registration for the Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences conference is now open. The conference is taking place at the British Library on the 1 and 2 July 2013. Visit the conference pages from more details.

JISC Collections, in partnership with OAPEN Foundation, is holding a two-day international conference intended for all stakeholders in scholarly communications including European research funders, senior institutional managers, publishers, learned societies, librarians and researchers. The conference aims to raise awareness of open access, to increase understanding of key challenges and to identify where international common policies and frameworks could support the adoption of open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).

Open Access Monographs Conference

Open Access Monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences Conference
Date: 1 and 2 July 2013
Location: The British Library, London, UK

JISC Collections, in partnership with OAPEN Foundation, is holding a two-day international conference intended for all stakeholders in scholarly communications including European research funders, senior institutional managers, publishers, learned societies, librarians and researchers. The conference aims to raise awareness of open access, to increase understanding of key challenges and to identify where international common policies and frameworks could support the adoption of open access monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences (HSS).

In the UK, the release of the Finch Report alongside the Research Councils UK’s policy is causing much concern in the humanities and social science (HSS) community who feel that policy is being developed with little consideration of the specificities of HSS research or regard for the monograph publishing model. The monograph is the gold standard and in many disciplines remains the primary method through which humanities and social science researchers communicate their work. It is also an essential part of career progression and reputation establishment for many young researchers.

In the last two decades, monographs sales have rapidly declined from an average of over 2000 to just 200 – in line with library budgets reductions. In order to support the continued existence of the monograph and to move HSS in line with other areas of scholarly communication and research funder’s policies, a new open access business model is required. However, transitioning to new models requires institutional and cultural change alongside experimentation, testing and consultation.

Now is the time for consultation, collaboration and commitment to explore. Monographs received few paragraphs in the Finch Report and at previous conferences and events questions about open access questions about monograph publishing have been met with shrugs. Sponsored by the AHRC and ESRC and hosted by The British Library, this conference will be the first to tackle open access monographs in the humanities and social sciences head on.

Key topics of the conference will include new open access business models, maintaining quality, the future of peer-review, creative commons licensing and international policy development. Current confirmed speakers include:

To support HSS researchers, the second day of the conference will include practical sessions on topics including ORCID, funding open access monographs, knowing your rights, finding a reputable OA publisher, promoting your book and altmetrics. There will also be sessions for research funders, publishers, learned societies and institutional staff to discuss cross industry and international issues such as funding policies, quality assurance, common standards, metadata, dissemination and discovery and infrastructure to support archiving and preservation.

Delegates that attend this conference will leave feeling informed of the relevant issues and equipped with useful information to assist in future discussions and decision making within their organisation.

The full programme will be released shortly.

If you would like any further information on this conference, or are interested in getting involved please contact Caren Milloy, Head of Projects, JISC Collections or Eelco Ferwerda, Director of OAPEN Foundation.

OAPEN-UK Project Update Jan 2013

As the next meeting of the OAPEN-UK Steering Group approaches (7 Feb) we are working on a number of updates to be discussed.

What is the impact of Open Access on print and electronic sales?

  • We have collected the usage data for all of the titles in the pilot – this includes the download statistics from the OAPEN Library, the publishers’ platforms and Google Books.
  • We have also collected the sales data for the print and electronic versions of each title and have additional statistics from Nielsen. What we are working on now is finding a methodology to allow us to compare the data for the titles that will be statistically sound. This is not an easy task as we have to take into account the publication dates, previous print runs etc. We will present scenarios to the Steering Group for them to discuss and agree.

What is the value that authors and publishers bring to the publishing process?

  • We have completed two workshops looking at the monograph publishing process – one with authors / researchers and one with publishers. We have collected in detail each and every step of the process and who is doing what and the end result looks a little like this! 
  • The point of this work is to address the misconceptions that we have seen arise around the value that each party brings to the table and to help stakeholders appreciate and understand each other! We hope to make infographics from this work that highlight effort, processes and costs.

What impact will open access monographs have on HSS learned societies?

  • There has been much discussion following the release of the statement from the 21 history journals and in relation to the RLUK open access policy. There are questions over the impact on learned societies and HSS research that they feel is not being accounted for. As part of our research we are doing two case studies: one with the Royal Historical Society and one with the Regional Studies Association to explore their monograph / book series publishing in more detail and discuss if moving to an open access model will impact on their business models and the value they provide to their members.

We will also be discussing the institutional case studies and publisher interviews that we have planned for this year. All the research we are doing in this project, which is funded by the AHRC and Jisc,  is to support stakeholders in making informed decision about moving to open access monograph publishing. We are listening to each stakeholder, gathering evidence and sharing all we learn openly. We will continue to share all findings in the Research Findings section of the website.

Launch of Open Library of Humanities

The Open Library of Humanities project has launched. The project aims to explore a PLOS-style model for the humanities and social sciences and provide a platform for Open Access publishing that is:

  • Reputable and respected through rigorous peer review
  • Sustainable
  • Digitally preserved and safely archived in perpetuity
  • Non-profit
  • Open in both monetary and permission terms
  • Non-discriminatory (APCs are waiverable)
  • Technically innovative in response to the needs of scholars and librarians
  • A solution to the serials crisis

They currently have a call for participation out so if you are interested in getting involved please contact Martin, Caroline and Tim.

Here at OAPEN-UK we are really pleased by the news of this new project that is focusing on humanities and social science researchers and looking at a sustainable open access future – all experimentation and gathering of evidence is welcome and can only help us move forward.

Directory of Open Access Books Survey

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is currently running a survey to help them learn about needs and expectations with respect to the services, workflows and protocols that they are developing for the DOAB. Please do take part in this survey as it is an important step in terms of establishing quality assurance for open access monograph publishing. Official invite below:

The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a discovery service for Open Access monographs and a metadata dissemination service. DOAB provides a searchable index to peer-reviewed monographs and edited volumes published under an Open Access business model, with links to the full texts of the publications at the publisher’s website or repository. DOAB allows aggregators, libraries and other service providers to harvest metadata on Open Access monographs in order to integrate these in their catalogues and services.

The questionnaire contains approximately 15 questions and takes about 10 minutes to complete. The collected data will be anonymised.

To participate, please click on this link:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/DOAB

Thank you in advance for your kind contribution, which will help us improve DOAB further. For any further questions regarding the survey or DOAB, please contact: info@oapen.org

Quick overview of some OA news

Over the summer there have been some great discussions taking place and new technical developments in the open access scholarly monograph arena. Here is a quick overview with some links:

1. If you are interested in how to establish and maintain the quality of open access monographs and what impact Creative Commons has then I really recommend that you read the discussion that took place recently on the DOAB email list which has been put up on the DOAB blog. Some of the questions being asked and the comments / ideas / suggestions are really enlightening and show a variety of viewpoints. This really demonstrates the difficulties that will be faced in a transition to OA monograph publishing. You can join the mailing list at: https://listserv.gwdg.de/mailman/listinfo/doab

2. There have been a lot of blog posts about monographs, peer review processes, publishing, funding models and new trends. We are capturing these all at our Diigo OAPEN-UK Group. I think my favourite at the moment is the LSE Impact of the Social Sciences blog which has had a great range of guest bloggers and some extremely fascinating discussions.

3. I’m hoping that you will have all seen the results of the researcher survey that we undertook with HSS researchers – we had 690 responses and it is fascinating data. Three of my highlights (Warning! my interpretations) are:

  • The major push for CC BY (as we have seen in STEM) is going to be met with some major resistance in the humanities and social sciences only a tiny percentage of researchers would be happy to publish their monograph under this licence. 90% prefer the most restrictive CC licence.
  • Researchers do not want to have to do marketing and promotion, dissemination etc and rely heavily on their publishers to provide these services. In fact, it’s what they are most happy with their publishers about. Which begs the question – if they are so happy with the marketing and promotion and dissemination efforts of their publishers, and primarily pick them for their expertise at getting books to the right readers – is there really a monograph crisis (given the reported decline in sales) or do researchers not really care once their book has been published? Is this really about what academics want or what we think that they want? I’m being flippant and controversial here but this really does need some further exploration!
  • Core university funds underpin the majority of HSS research so if we are to move to a Gold OA model, then central pots of money to support HSS research will be critical. Pro VCs of research and senior management have to engage now for OA monographs to progress

4. The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) has 1146 academic peer-reviewed books from 31 publishers and has just released a new search box tool which you can drop into a website and allow you to search DOAB and access the books directly from your website. They have also just released MARCXML metadata to enable easier incorporation into library catalogues.

Our authors don’t care about financial compensation

We have 58 books in the OAPEN-UK pilot – 29 are available open access and 29 are available under the normal route to market. In November 2011 we sent out a survey to the authors of these titles and to members of our Steering Group which includes 5 publishers, some researchers, librarians and research council reps. The survey asked a variety of questions about their attitudes and perceptions and provides us with a baseline to track changes against as we progress through the project. What we are specifically looking at is if participation in the project changes their perceptions towards open access.

Of the 31 authors who responded, (it’s a small sample size but the findings are supported by our researcher survey which had 690 responses), financial compensation is not important and was ranked very low compared to career advancement and releasing information for social progress and knowledge in society.

Read the full article published in Insights to find out more about our authors and steering group’s perceptions and view the survey data in our baseline presentation.

What do humanities and social science researchers really think?

We surveyed humanities and social science researchers on their attitudes towards open access publishing, their awareness of Creative Commons licensing, the value they place on the services provided by publishers, how they feel about self-publishing, and their preferences and priorities as both readers and authors of monographs.

The full results are fascinating and we really recommend that you read the full presentation but here is a little taster for you:

  • 690 usable responses – 82% UK based – 60% Humanities / 40% Social Science
  • 53% are awareness of OA and 38% familiar with open access (that pretty high)
  • Around 50% of researchers think it is ok to make a profit from OA publishing as long as that profit goes back into supporting the discipline or making more OA content available – 20% think you can make a profit and use it however you like and 20% think that you can make a profit but only to cover costs. This is interesting for business modelling
  • Almost 60% of researchers are aware of Creative Commons but 40% are not (still lots to be done here)
  • Almost 80% would prefer the most restrictive CC licence (CC BY NC ND) but what is interesting is that if you look across the responses it is clear that researchers are more concerned about protecting their work than it being used commercially as CC BY ND is preferred over CC BY NC. This is extremely interesting and will be the focus on more of our work
  • Researchers value the distribution and marketing services of publishers the most – oh and that they give them a print book at the end!
  • In correlation to the above, researchers as authors are least willing to perform marketing and distribution  – more to discover here in understanding what it is that authors think their publishers do, especially in light of recent blogs on this topic
  • Early career academics are more willing to consider self-publishing than later career researchers
  • Of the 397 that had published a mono, book chapter or co-authored a mono since 2000, 45% said that their research was underpinned by cure university funds, 22% from research council grants and 20% from another funder – central pots for HSS researchers to use to fund OA monographs (if it is a gold model) is going to be critical
  • Of the 397 – the monograph authors picked their publishers because 1st they are good at disseminating to the right audience, 2nd cause they have good QA process, 3rd cause they are the best in their filed and 4th because they were the only ones interested!
  • Back to the 690 – 60% had read a monograph in the last couple of days – 39% had bought it and 33% had got it via the library
  • Phd students more likely to rely on the library that late career academics
  • Print still dominates reading preferences but less so for early career academics
  • Perception of the 690 is that open access will have negative impacts on quality, reputation and reward but will be brilliant for availability and efficiency – so clearly any open access model really has to address quality and think about impacts in terms of the REF and reputations. Oh and no one really cares about royalties!

The presentation provides so much more information than above and we are going to have enjoy using this data to inform the future of OAPEN-UK. We welcome your comments and thoughts.

I would like to thank @ellencollins for all her work in pulling together the data and creating the presentation.

Enjoy!
from @carenmilloy

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