The HEFCE report on Open Access Monographs: some reflections

pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks 2015-01-23

Summary:

"The environment surrounding open access to monographs was significantly advanced today by the release of a report commissioned by the UK’s Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), a quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation) that translates the government’s higher education budget allocation into usable funds. In April 2014, HEFCE announced that eligibility to receive future funding through its “quality-related” (QR) stream would depend exclusively upon the assessment of green open access material: a mandate. Specifically, authors must deposit the accepted version of their articles at the time of acceptance (Higher Education Funding Council for England 2014, para.17–19). However, monographs ‘and other-long form publications’, edited collections, non-text outputs and data are all excluded from this mandate (Higher Education Funding Council for England 2014, para.14). From the rhetoric deployed by HEFCE and the UK’s Research Councils, some academics have surmised that these bodies would like to mandate monographs for a future exercise; after all, why should one form be deemed different to others in their eyes when both are supported by QR funding (Evans 2014)? However, in recognition of the additional barriers (and researcher sensitivities) surrounding open access monographs, HEFCE instead opted for now to mount an investigation into the subject, the first national-level funding council investigation of its type. The investigation was led by Professor Geoffrey Crossick, an ex-Vice Chancellor of the University of London and a Distinguished Professor of History and supported by an expert reference group, of which I was a member. My opinion of the process was that Geoff was extremely fair and open in his consultations. As I’ll discuss, I’m not 100% in agreement with all of his conclusions — and that’s fine. As the report notes, it is not the report of the reference group, it is Geoff’s report. What I am sure of, though, is that he gave a fair hearing to all sides of the argument, consulted widely on the matter and went to great lengths to understand the concerns of a broad range of stakeholders ..."

Link:

https://www.martineve.com/2015/01/22/the-hefce-report-on-open-access-monographs-some-reflections/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » pontika.nancy@gmail.com's bookmarks
Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.funders oa.uk oa.ref oa.hefce oa.books oa.mandates oa.reports oa.comment oa.new ru.sparc15 oa.policies

Date tagged:

01/23/2015, 08:36

Date published:

01/23/2015, 11:17