The REF OA book mandate will pile yet more financial pressure on HE

Philosophy, like many humanities disciplines, is in a more hostile financial and reputational environment than at any time since the Second World War. Philosophy departments and programmes are closing and contracting amid well-documented financial pressure on UK higher education that has put an estimated 40 per cent of universities in financially precarious positions.

In this context, piling yet more pressure on universities – and especially on humanities departments – would seem unwise at best. Yet that is what the UK funding councils are doing by extending their open access (OA) requirements for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework to long-form publications.

This will make books, often the strongest humanities outputs, exceptionally expensive to publish compared with journal articles. It is estimated that the average OA cost is £10,000 per book, yet there is no provision to fund these additional costs.

It has been suggested that the quality-related (QR) funding that universities receive on the basis of their REF performance could be used to meet OA costs. But this would result in a perverse chasing of REF success just to fund publications for the next REF – and a perverse incentive to cut yet more humanities provision. In the absence of new funding streams, the prohibitive cost means universities will be unable to provide funding for all researchers to publish their books and book chapters OA. Rationing will be required, amounting to a form of academic censorship that undermines academic integrity and freedom.

Research England, which administers the REF, cannot simply ignore the funding issue or pretend that it is a problem elsewhere in the system. And its claim that the change has already happened through the implementation of UK Research and Innovation’s OA policy is wholly disingenuous. Books that were the outcomes of grants provided by the Arts and Humanities and Economic and Social research councils constituted only 5 per cent of those submitted to REF 2014, according to the data analysis referenced in Research England’s consultation on open access. Extending OA requirements to the REF will mean they apply to almost every book – and without the funding that UKRI provides to underwrite its OA mandate.

The shift to OA for long-form outputs is far more dramatic a change than it was for journal articles. The perceived quality differences between publishers is a crucial factor in determining where people publish. While this might change over time, it will not happen quickly, nor will it happen if the UK moves to OA unilaterally. Moreover, the supposition that publishers in general – and the globally dominant publishers in particular – will be happy to permit “green” publication on open repositories after two years is unsubstantiated and, in our so-far anecdotal experience, unlikely.

This means that UK academics will no longer be able to publish with these publishers. In philosophy, that will present us with an impossible choice: publish in a way that is OA compliant or publish in a way that will increase our reputation and make ourselves most employable, recognising that the job market in philosophy is global. If we chose the latter, REF submissions will not contain the best books, which will give the impression that UK philosophy, currently a globally significant player, is weaker than it is.

Unlike journal articles, books frequently have additional audiences beyond academia. Trade books are listed as “exceptions” from the OA requirements, but “crossover” books, aimed at both academic and public audiences, are not included on that list, so presumably will be included in the mandate. We think this is a mistake.

It is frequently said that OA books are more read than non-OA books. This is true, but disingenuous; they are referenced by more academics, but they are unlikely to reach the broader audiences that crossover books frequently reach. The best philosophy crossover books are picked up by journalists, policymakers and the public more broadly, resulting in invitations to literary festivals and being routinely reviewed in globally influential press outlets, such as The London Review of Books, The Atlantic and The New York Times.

However, only books that are well produced and well marketed – the kind of books that bookshops promote – will reach these broader audiences. And only big publishers have the resources to produce books of this type: books that are expertly marketed directly to the public, often at affordable prices. In these cases, the publishers are not parasitic on public-funded research but are providing academics with access to a readership that is otherwise unavailable.

We agree with the general principle that publicly funded research should be freely available. But if the cost is so high that it will hinder research, demoralise academics and exclude key audiences, the move to OA for long-form publication should be paused.

Heather Widdows is professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick. Fiona Macpherson is professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow and Simon Kirchin is professor of applied ethics at the University of Leeds. This article is an edited version of their submission to the REF 2029 open access consultation on behalf of the British Philosophy Association. The full response is available here.