Business, Innovation and Skills CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by the African Studies Association of the UK (ASAUK) and SCOLMA (the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa)
Introduction
1. The ASAUK is the UK learned society for African studies, recognised by the British Academy, and with an emphasis on scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Its members are academics, journalists, broadcasters, civil servants and others with an interest in Africa. It is a voluntary organisation, governed by a Council drawn principally from the UK academic community. We facilitate links between UK and African institutions and scholars, support scholarly journal publishing in and on Africa, and support the exchange of ideas in and about Africa.
2. SCOLMA (the UK Libraries and Archives Group on Africa) is a forum for librarians, archivists and others concerned with African studies materials in libraries and archives in the United Kingdom. Its activities include publishing a journal, organising conferences and seminars, and offering networking opportunities and advice.
3. Considerable uncertainty exists about the ways in which open access may impact on the academic system. This submission reflects specifically on the potential implications of open access in African studies, but as a multi-disciplinary field, many of the concerns raised are relevant to the humanities and social science more broadly.
4. In addition to exploring the challenges for UK based researchers, we are concerned to address the implications for colleagues in African universities, who are vital partners in our research activities. It is our firm belief that the health and future prosperity of the UK African studies community will depend on the health and prosperity of scholarship in Africa’s higher education and research institutions, and that a strong African studies sector in the UK contributes to African research and higher education. Moreover, as African economies are among the fastest growing in the world at present, building strong institutional links with their growing higher education sector will produce important opportunities for collaboration across society.
5. The importance of a strong research sector in Africa has also been identified by the Department for International Development (DFID), through its 2008–13 research strategy,1 and by parliament, through a recent inquiry by the Science and Technology Committee. The Committee’s report concluded that: “Scientific capacity building—a process that enables countries to shape and sustain their own long-term development—is important in international development”; and that “Scientific research collaboration between UK researchers and their partners in developing countries are valuable to both parties and should be actively encouraged by funders of research in the UK”.2
6. The UK is amongst the most important centres of research and scholarly publishing on Africa. The UK research community publishes the world’s leading and oldest journals in African studies, including, amongst others: African Affairs (Royal African Society journal, since 1901) Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, (since 1928) and an array of journals established in the decolonisation/post-colonial periods: the Journal of African History (since 1960); the Journal of Southern African Studies (since 1974); the Journal of Eastern African Studies; the Journal of Modern African Studies (since 1963); Azania; the Journal of African Cultural Studies (since 1988); the Journal of African Law (since 1957); the Review of African Political Economy (since 1974); and African Research and Documentation (since 1973).
Summary
7. We strongly support efforts to increase access to scholarly work on Africa and in Africa, in the continent’s teaching and research institutions. As such we firmly endorse the principles on which open access is founded—namely access to research publication irrespective of ability to pay and the free circulation of ideas and evidence derived from academic research. We recognise that significant increases in the cost of journal subscriptions have become unmanageable for many university libraries (although not typically for the journals noted above), and that a shift towards open access publishing has the potential to progressively advance the availability of journals, to reduce the subscription burden on libraries and readers, and to open up new opportunities for the circulation and discussion of humanities and social science scholarship. This is of particular concern given our work with researchers in African and other low income countries.
8. While there are many important benefits to be realised from a transition to open access publication, the rapid implementation of current policy is of concern to us if it occurs without opportunities for broader and more inclusive discussion of the implications of the Finch recommendations, particularly in the humanities and social sciences. We have serious concerns about how the ways in which the implementation of open access, as currently expressed in government policy, will impact both the work of academics in the UK, and that of our colleagues and peers in African institutions.
9. Open access is commonly framed solely as a matter of access. Often neglected is the issue of participation. Participation requires that researchers and readers are both able to contribute to as well as consume scholarship. It is vital that the elimination of barriers to access for readers do not lead to barriers for authors seeking to publish.
10. Our concerns relate specifically to:
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Publishing and Learned Societies
11. Learned societies are a vital part of the UK research environment. Through their direct organisation of conferences, and provision of funding to support conferences convened by their members, through the award of research and travel grants, and through support for publication, they significantly advance academic work. Learned societies are particularly important in the support they offer to postgraduates and early career academics, many of whom lack alternative and institutional sources of funding. They also help to ensure that researchers beyond the London-Oxbridge circles are able to participate in events and to stay connected, particularly important for those who work outside of substantial centres of African studies.
12. Learned society publishing accounts for around 50% of the top journals as measured by the Thomson Reuters Impact Factor. As in other fields, some of the UK’s African studies journals are published on behalf of scholarly societies or under collective ownership models. Subscription revenue from titles is thus ploughed back into scholarship in the ways outlined above. If subscription revenue from publishing is lost, societies will be unable to offer this vital support. The loss of a subscription journal would not only remove the direct subscription income received from libraries throughout the world, but may also lead to declines in membership revenue, if a journal subscription is no longer offered as a principal benefit of membership.
13. Societies will need time to identify and make the transition to alternative revenue bases. In the case of some learned societies, whose major activity is the publication and communication of scholarly knowledge, it is not at all clear what these alternative revenue sources would be. Full open access may not be an economically viable model for societies, particularly for smaller organisations; without alternative sources of income they may be forced to close.
14. As vital parts of the UK research environment, it is important that while the implications of open access are explored, and alternative revenue models investigated, the activities of learned societies are not damaged in the interim.
Embargo Periods in Hybrid or Green Publishing
15. It seems likely that a mixed or hybrid publishing system will emerge, whereby some journals operate on both “gold” (free access to readers, APCs charged)3 and “green” (subscription access, free to publish) models according to the preference of authors, their universities, their funders or their ability to pay. As the Finch report stated, a mixed economy of “green” and “gold” open access is likely to be the realistic option in the medium term.
16. The “green” model allows authors to self-archive a copy of a paper in an institutional or disciplinary repository and to make it freely available after an embargo period, determined by the period a publisher feels is necessary to ensure a commercial advantage, or by sustainable business models in the case of the learned societies and university presses. Humanities and social science articles tend to have a longer half-life than those in STEM subjects, meaning that they do not receive as many of their citations as soon after publication, and continue to receive a higher level of citations for a relatively longer period post-publication. In some disciplines (eg history) duration of impact (half-life) may be a more important criteria than immediacy. As a result, publishers are likely to require longer embargo periods to ensure libraries do not cancel subscriptions.
17. The BIS statement of 16 July 2012 suggested a two-year embargo for disciplines where it would take longer to “secure payback”. Current RCUK policy specifies a maximum embargo of 12 months for research funded by the AHRC and ESRC.
18. It is unclear at present whether subscriptions to journals will be reduced in the context of open access. At the same time, it is possible that library budgets will be reduced in anticipation of such a reduction, and as universities re-allocate monies towards APCs. If this happens then there will be reduced access in the UK to research published elsewhere, and probably to titles that may be considered of marginal value, but which remain important to specialists. This could have significant implications for the international connectedness of UK scholars, and their ability to collaborate with colleagues around the world.
Author Processing Charges
19. The “gold” model is premised on the payment of an author fee in order to publish. Unlike in the STEM subject, much work in the humanities and social sciences is undertaken with relatively modest grant income. The Research Councils are not the primary funders of humanities and social sciences work and this is certainly the case in African studies; much work is effectively only part-funded, from the limited time available to academics as part of salaried positions or via sabbaticals. The British Academy expects that for many university-based researchers, humanities and social science publishing will need to be supported from quality-related (QR) funds, provided by HEFCE and the other national funding councils; these seem unlikely to be sufficient to meet the likely demand for APCs. There is a danger that important African studies scholarship could lose out in internal department competition for limited publication funds as a result.4
20. There are also many independent researchers in African studies, and in the humanities and social sciences more broadly, as well as self-funded PhD students, who will entirely lack funding to cover APCs. This is particularly so for early career researchers. Unlike in the sciences, where early career researchers publish with their research team leader, in the humanities it has become vital for young researchers to publish several articles, and often a book, under sole-authorship. This is usually done prior to their receiving more permanent lecturing work, and the new system of APCs will seriously hamper the career progression of such researchers as a result. This has extremely serious implications for the diversity of the British academic community, and the ideas discussed within it.
21. Managing APCs will require new mechanisms within universities to allocate limited funding. The allocation and administration of publication funds within universities could have serious implications for the freedom and ability of academics to publish their work, if decisions on where and what to publish are effectively removed from individual academics and handed to administrative structures, or to colleagues less familiar with the detail of the research in question. If the “gold” model is favoured, the number of papers an academic is able to publish may be rationed according to the availability of funding, and a university’s willingness to pay to publish particular work. This may introduce new inequalities within departments.
22. The overall costs of covering APCs for universities are currently unknown. The Open University has estimated that, to reach the minimum suggested level of 45% of articles published as “gold” open access in 2013/14, it would need to find an additional £740,000 per annum.5 Ultimately universities hope to be able to re-allocate parts of their journal purchasing budgets towards the costs of author fees although, as noted above, this may not prove to be the case The administrative mechanisms and time needed to manage APC funds, and to determining what is published, will also incur costs.
23. It seems likely that postgraduates and early career academics will struggle to access departmental funding to publish. It is also possible that the pressures of the Research Excellence Framework (REF), and the need to demonstrate research impact, will lead to some work being supported for publication while other work is not. This could potentially seriously infringe the principle of academic freedom, and could act to discourage new and innovative publications which challenge existing paradigms; at present decisions on the validity and worth of an argument are made by external peer reviewers, rather than by departments. Researchers could also be pushed towards publish in journals which offer lower APCs, with less regard for their suitability. While online and open access will undoubtedly enhance the discoverability of articles wherever they are published, we believe that journals will continue to serve as important ways of focusing and organising academic debate and will continue to provide some measure of prestige and reputation and quality control.
24. It is possible that further inequalities will be created within the UK university system. Academics in universities which receive proportionally less of UK research funding are likely to encounter particular problems in publishing their work, as these institutions will receive proportionally less of any additional APC funding made available. Current policy could further concentrate research in a smaller number of centres, and could restrict career mobility within the university system as a result. Wealthier universities, potentially able to publish more in gold journals, will also be in a position to make their work more open and more visible.
Rights of Use and Re-use and Creative Commons “CC-BY” Licensing
25. The implications of CC-BY licenses for the humanities and social sciences are still uncertain, and we therefore feel that this is an area which merits significant further exploration and consultation with researchers. Under the proposed CC-BY licensing, research can be remixed, altered or translated by for profit entities, without the express permission or approval of the copyright holder or author. The primary aims of CC-BY licensing appear to be related to providing access to the underlying data within a publication, however in many cases of humanities and social science research there is no underlying data to which to provide access; instead an article presents a personal interpretation of social phenomena.
Alternative Publishing Models
26. Online publishing and open access offer exciting new possibilities for scholarly publishing. Established initiatives in the STEM subjects such as PLOS and BioMed Central have demonstrated potential new models, as have a host of smaller initiatives. A new project, the Open Library of Humanities, is exploring similar models for the humanities and social sciences. These initiatives may offer considerable value to the humanities and social sciences, however, there are still at a very early stage.
27. We acknowledge that the move towards open access publishing does not in principle impact on the quality of academic publishing and that open access publishing does not in itself remove peer review or editorial contributions. Nevertheless, a number of emerging open access publications have also chosen to adopt alternative editorial arrangements, informed either by cost or speed of publishing or both. In some instances, for example, journals have opted for a dispersed editor model, with editors sourced for each individual article but with no single editor or editorial team for the journal as a whole. In the African studies community, we feel that the role of an experienced editorial team can considerably improve the quality of published work, making individual articles more effective at communicating complex arguments, and contributing significantly to the careers of individual scholars and their ability to participate in the scholarly community as a result. This is particularly significant in the case of scholars who lack good institutional support, in the form of supervisors or the supportive research environment of an academic department.
28. The lack of good local, institutional support for publishing is a situation which pertains in many African HE institutions. The ASAUK has been addressing this by providing intensive writing workshops conducted by the editors of the journals listed above. Recognised by the British Academy as an effective initiative to redress the imbalances in African scholarship these workshops are facilitated by experienced and specialist journal editors and supported financially from income derived from journal subscriptions.
29. While such new publishing models are explored and refined it is important that existing scholarly activity is not damaged by undermining existing approaches to publishing before viable alternatives have been developed.
Publishing Outside of the UK
30. International scholarship and collaboration is fundamental to African studies. It is therefore important that UK academics retain the ability not only to publish outside of the UK, but to be able to return such papers in the REF; if UK policy imposes conditions which are not by non-UK journals, the ability of UK academics to publish in the most appropriate venues, and to engage in vital international collaboration may be constrained.
31. It is also vital that UK journals receive international contributions. This maintains their reputation and global relevance, and by extension the UK’s reputation as a global leader in research. The government’s current proposals threaten this capacity. It is unlikely that a country which does not operate an APC system will be prepared to pay for their academics to publish in British journals. This could mean that UK journals are progressively stripped of a global audience, as scholars opt to publish elsewhere.
32. In the long term, this could threaten the dynamism of British academic life, and the world-class reputation of British universities. If British academics are unable to publish in journals outside the UK, and non-British scholars cease to publish in British journals, the international reputation of UK scholarship could decline. This could have important impacts on the global reputation of British universities, and the likelihood of leading students and thinkers wishing to further their careers here.
Open Access Book Publishing
33. To date the Finch report and subsequent Government response have dealt only with journals. In humanities and social science research book publication tends to be particularly important, but there are few established models of OA publishing in these fields. It is vital that UK policy recognises and reflects the need of researchers in these fields to publish in this form, and that researchers are not penalised for an inability to publish open access as a result.
The Implications of Open Access for African Universities and Research Institutes
34. Open access publication offers some clear opportunities to African researchers. Specifically, it offers the potential to significantly increase access to international research literature, and to increase the visibility of African research (particularly through the repository model). These are important and significant gains. However, open access may also create new problems for African research, while existing obstacles remain.
35. African scholars encounter real difficulties in accessing scholarly work, wherever it is published. The situation has improved markedly in recent years thanks to a series of access initiatives, many of which have been supported by publisher philanthropy, and as a result of commitment to these principles by members of the publishing collectives and learned societies,6 but despite steady improvements, internet connectivity and computing facilities remain significant barriers.
36. Full and equal participation in international scholarship requires that African researchers are also able to publish their own work—being producers as well as consumers of scholarship. Publishing is already a major challenge for many African researchers; the system of APCs is likely to present a significant additional barrier. While many publishers offer fee waivers, this is unlikely to be a sustainable option in the longer term, and African universities are unlikely to be in a position to meet the costs of publishing from their own budgets.
37. A strong research sector within Africa requires that Africa has a vibrant academic publishing sector of its own. Many African journals are relatively fragile, struggling to gain sufficient subscription revenue, and often driven by academic volunteerism. It is unlikely that journals produced within Africa will be able to move to the APC model in place of subscription fees, nor to waive fees to both authors and readers. Were they to implement APCs, African researchers able to secure fee waivers in UK journals could well be prevented from publishing in national and regional journals, undermining an important part of African scholarly infrastructure.
Summary
38. We welcome the many opportunities which open access offers to African studies research, and to our peers and colleagues in African universities. However, we feel that open access, as it is currently expressed in UK government policy, could inadvertently serve to damage the level and quality of scholarship in African studies, and in the humanities and social sciences more broadly, and compound existing difficulties experienced by early career scholars, and by our colleagues in African universities. While being supportive of the overall direction in which open access seeks to move scholarship and publishing, we feel that some caution is needed. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with the Committee further, or to provide any further information that the Committee might require.
On behalf of
The Council of the African Studies Association of the UK
The Executive Committee of SCOLMA
The Editorial Board of the Review of African Political Economy
The Editorial Board of the Journal of Eastern African Studies
The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies
The Editorial Board of the Journal of African History
Professor Steph Newell
President
African Studies Association of the UK
7 February 2013
1 Department for International Development (2008) DFID Research Strategy 2008-2013 http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/research-strategy-08.pdf
2 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (2012) Building scientific capacity for development. Fourth Report of Session 2012–13 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmsctech/377/377.pdf
3 We note that not all “gold” OA journals charge APCs
4 British Academy submission to the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology on the implementation of open access for published academic research findings, January 2013 http://www.britac.ac.uk/templates/asset-relay.cfm?frmAssetFileID=12194
5 “Implications for individual researchers”, Presentation by Dr Tim Blackman, Academy of Social Sciences Conference on Implementing Finch, 29 November 2012: http://www.acss.org.uk/docs/Open%20Access%20event%20Nov%202012/Blackman%20-%20implications%20for%20individual%20researcher%5D.pdf
6 Eg Research4Life (www.research4life.org); the Programme for the Enhancement of Research Information (INASP, www.inasp.info/perii); EIFL licensing (www.eifl.net/licensing)