Open-access books need more support from universities | Research Professional News
flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks 2024-04-18
Summary:
by Lucy Barnes
The consultation on the open-access policy for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework launched last month to a wave of criticism from academics about its proposal to include books.
The fears expressed about the REF policy included an inability to meet the cost of publication fees, the loss of royalties, the death of academic publishing and the destruction of certain disciplines.
Despite the funding bodies’ assurances that trade books are out of scope and that repository routes are permitted, the arguments continue. Not only are there a number of misconceptions deriving from a lack of familiarity with open-access book publishing, but authors are concerned for mixed and sometimes contradictory reasons.
Some academics object to making their work freely available because they anticipate high sales. Others believe their work to be too niche to garner broad interest or too specialist for many to understand.
Others argue that open access, rather than helping their career by bringing more readers, will threaten it by making it more difficult to publish the authoritative monograph that is so important for hiring, promotion and—of course—the REF. In subjects where third-party materials such as images are important, there are fears that licences for open-access publication may be unaffordable.
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