Open Access publishing and the crisis in British universities

"Regular readers will know that I’m skeptical about the Open Access movement—the idea that the cost of publishing books should be recovered not primarily through sales to libraries and other consumers, but from some other source so that books are “free.” The movement is picking up steam quickly in the UK, where Open Access publication will soon be a requirement for most books by university-based authors. To get a better handle on the situation, I asked my colleague Bruce Baker—an American who works as a professor of history at Newcastle University and publishes widely—for perspective. I’m grateful for his guest post, which explains how Open Access is embedded in the broader Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 and what Bruce calls an ongoing crisis in British universities...."