Don’t wait to tackle open access books cash challenge, REF told

Funders behind the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) have been urged to explain how any future open access (OA) books mandate will be funded by cash-strapped humanities departments, amid scepticism that a viable policy will emerge later this decade.

With the proposed requirement that long-form outputs should be free to read within two years of publication being scrapped for the 2029 REF, attention will turn to crafting a mandate to take effect for the next seven-year REF cycle.

There are, however, concerns that any future open access plan will hit exactly the same stumbling blocks as REF 2029 did – namely, how a financially strained university sector can meet the additional costs of open access publishing.

Greg Walker, Regius professor of rhetoric and English literature at the University of Edinburgh, said he was “very pleased” by the decision to delay the mandate, which would “give everyone time to think a bit more coherently about what needs to happen next”.

But it was difficult to see how the “intractable” issue of funding open access might be addressed, given that the University of Oxford estimated the proposed mandate would have cost it £20 million for the current REF cycle alone, with a sector-wide roll-out likely to cost “hundreds of millions” of pounds.

“I’m not sure that I can see how such sums are going to become available for the next REF to make this possible nationwide [from 2029], not without substantially more funds from the government to lubricate the system,” said Professor Walker, speaking on behalf of the English Association.

“The research councils or Wellcome can mandate OA publication for the projects they fund because they are willing to pay for it as part of grant awards, so publishers get paid and the work is made available to the widest possible readership, ideally in both OA and printed forms.

“What Research England has now accepted, I think, is that, if long-form publications as a whole across UK higher education are going to have to be published in OA to meet the requirements for REF, then a similar funding structure needs to be in place to support it.”

Martin Paul Eve, professor of literature, technology and publishing at Birkbeck, University of London, was also sceptical that a workable post-2029 mandate would emerge unless work began immediately.

“It is hard to see, given the extensive trailing of this mandate, what will be different by 2029,” said Professor Eve, who has championed open access publishing.

“We seem stuck in a doom loop whereby Research England announces its policy decisions years in advance, but nobody systematically tries to implement them until the last minute, by which time they say it was too late.

“We will soon have a world where all science is free to read online, while humanities scholarship lingers in little-read and extremely expensive books. This cannot but be terrible for the visibility of our disciplines.”

However, some experts were more hopeful that an open access policy for long-form outputs might emerge in time for the next REF cycle.

Anthony Cond, chief executive of Liverpool University Press and president of the Association of University Presses, said the REF’s recent decision “sensibly reflects the challenging conditions in the sector at the present time” but also made it “absolutely clear that there will be an open access requirement for books from January 2029”.

“The policymakers have a little longer to frame that requirement and the various stakeholders have a little longer to plan, but the general direction of travel remains unchanged. It is vital that the dialogue continues to be frank and open in order to craft a sustainable open future for humanities scholarship,” he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com