The Commercialisation of Borderless Knowledge and the Role of Professional Associations (March 26, 2014)

"Open Access is changing the landscape of academic publishing with potentially serious consequences for professional associations like the ISA and its linked national associations. The changes are not uniform across all ‘jurisdictions’ and are, perhaps, happening most quickly in English-language area, especially the UK and USA. However, given the role of English as a global academic language, the ‘knock-on’ effects are potentially considerable. This has come to a head by the announcement that Sage, together with the ASA, will launch a new OA journal, Sociology Open. A number of contradictory factors are involved in the development of OA publishing. First, is the role of digital media in reducing the cost of publishing and providing a new print-free platform. Second, is a concern – especially by Governments in the UK and EU – about the high cost of subscription journals and their paywalls, restricting access to academic publications. Finally, there is the activity of commercial, for-profit publishers (and other higher education providers) seeking to maintain or discover new sources of profit. Let me begin by explaining the situation in the UK, which has been at the forefront of the neo-liberalisation of higher education and is driving these developments (for a broader discussion of commercial enclosure, see here). Research Councils that directly fund research grants, and HEFCE, the body that audits research in the Research Excellence Framework, have announced that all publications must be OA. They allow three possible modes: the author (ie the employing institution) pays an upfront author processing charge (APC) for free access (‘Gold OA’); reduced embargos on paywalls with free open access after (preferably) 12 months of publication (‘Green OA’); immediate deposit of pre-publication copy of article in an institutional repository (also described as ‘Green OA’). This is not the place to discuss the different categories of academic who might be disadvantaged by these arrangements (eg early career, newly retired, employed at an institution without resources to pay APCs, etc), issues that concern us greatly in the UK. Rather, I want to explain how these have destabilised academic publishing from the point of view of professional associations, and, in particular, destabilised their revenues. Our dilemma, in part, arises from commercial moves about a decade ago when the nature of the commercial threat posed by the internet became evident to some publishers. Sage, in particular, moved to aggregate as many titles as possible and offered significant revenue recovery to the professional associations that ran the titles. For the BSA, this now amounts to an income from publications of approximately £500,000 per year (of which a little more than half goes to support the other activities of the association) and other associations will also have benefited in a similar fashion. However, it has been derived from a four-fold increase in subscriptions over the period, thereby contributing to the increased criticism of the unsupportable nature of the subscription paywalls to university libraries, especially in economically less advantaged universities and regions. Indeed, UK Research Councils declare strongly that publicly-funded research should not be a source of revenue and that the only viable model for academic publishing is a ‘cost-recovery’ model. Enter APCs. In order, to comply with public policy requirements, nearly all Sage journals run by professional associations, now offer a ‘hybrid’ solution of ‘Gold OA’ publication in a subscription journal on payment of an APC charge of £800 ($1500) per article for social sciences, with the other articles available under ‘Green OA’ and a (current) embargo of 12 months before they become OA (the ‘embargo’ varies, with some journals trying to keep it at 24 months and the UK Research Councils seeking to bring it down to 6 months). Authors can also lodge their ‘pre-publication’ version so f their articles into an institutional repository and this will count as open access, although some publishers (not Sage) are moving to block this ..."