Joint statement on Open Access – RCUK/HEFCE | Arts and Humanities User Group (A-HUG) | 2013

AHUG statement on Open Access: "...Our collective view is very strongly in favour of an Open Access policy that supplies the products of publicly-funded research to the widest possible audience. But we are equally strongly of the view that Open Access models that have been shown to work for STEM journals cannot mechanically be applied to HSS journals and that we need a period of experimentation and flexibility, such as the STEM community has enjoyed over the past 10 years, to derive models that will work for us. Otherwise Open Access may be won at the cost of academic freedom and academic quality, and the public interest would not be served by such a Pyrrhic victory.... More attention needs to be paid to forms of Green OA that will sustain HSS journals..."