News Item - British Academy

"A new British Academy report offers the first full evidence-based analysis of the impact of UK Open Access policies on the current pattern of humanities and social science journal publishing. The report, Open Access journals in Humanities and Social Science, investigates some of the major issues involved in the UK’s Open Access agenda, seeking to examine various practical issues and difficulties that may arise, particularly in ‘green’ open-access journal publishing. Author of the report and Publications Secretary at the British Academy, Professor Chris Wickham, said: 'Far too much of the current UK Open Access debate has been based on very little evidence, particularly in the large humanities and social science sector. This project, funded by HEFCE and run by the British Academy, aimed to change that, and I believe it has. I hope that the conclusions of the report will shift the field of debate.' The key issues investigated in the report were: the degree to which non-UK journals are ‘compliant’ with current UK open-access policies, particularly ‘green’ Open Access policies; the differences between journal ‘usage half-lives’ (i.e. the number of months after which half of the eventual readers of an article will have downloaded it) across the same disciplines; library acquisition policies, and the degree to which these are affected by embargoes before articles are openly available.  Research for the report looked at Open Access use and understanding from across the humanities and social sciences. Key findings of the report include: There are wide differences in the patterns of the type of publication and publisher used across the sector; Current UK Open Access rules are not understood and adhered to throughout the international community; Journals in some subject areas (particularly English and Modern languages) have very low levels of Open Access availability outside the UK, which creates problems for Research Council funding of these disciplines according to currrent rules; No change is needed for embargo periods in humanities and social science; The length of time that research remains relevant, as measured by article downloads, is surprisingly stable across disciplines; As long as embargoes remain at 24 months, green Open Access will not have much effect on the buying of journals by libraries, or on journal financial viability ..."